Political Inheritance is a visual arts exhibition and literary performance series featuring womxn-identifying artists of Asian and Pacific Islander diasporic experiences with the goal of provoking reflection, conversation, and bridging about the inherited experiences—passed down within cultures and families—that shape AAPI’s relationships to U.S. political systems and U.S. political action.

Political Inheritance unearths and contextualizes the breadth of tensions, assumptions, joys, and traumas inherited in AAPI U.S. political participation or lack thereof, while catalyzing a dialogue that questions the perception of political identities.

An evening of poetry that honors the legacy of Asian & Asian American ancestry while planting seeds of hope, affirmation, and power for the future. Co-presented by Political Inheritance, AAWAA, and Oakland Asian Cultural Center as part of the Flor y Canto Literary Festival .

ILLUMINATE III is an iteration of the poetry performance series from Political Inheritance, a visual arts exhibition and literary performance featuring womxn-identifying artists of Asian and Pacific Islander diasporic experiences with the goal of provoking reflection, conversation, and bridging about the inherited experiences—passed down within cultures and families—that shape AAPI’s relationships to U.S. political systems and U.S. political action. For the most recent updates, please visit politicalinheritance.com. Political Inheritance is the culminating event of AAWAA’s Emerging Curators Program.

Sowing Agency is inspired by the fight for environmental justice, activating our Asian Pacific Islander communities to engage in the issues of today’s climate crisis. With a number of artistic disciplines represented, the pieces featured in the show work to realign our relationships with the Earth through introspection and collective leadership. The exhibition’s broad coalition of community partners amplifies calls for increased action to challenge extractive industries, monocultures, corporate greed and colonization. Weaving local and global climate resistance into our cultural consciousness, Sowing Agency is a visual and poetic address to the grief and resiliency rooted in “seeding the future.”

Presented by the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center as part of the 24th annual United States of Asian America Festival: Forging Our Futures - SoMa & Chinatown.

POPADUM! REVISITED takes form as a visual and literary curation, bringing together artists that subvert and question gender within their art. In the artwork, there’s a search for a home, with gazes turned towards the physical body indivisible from gender roles, family ties, and community. This exhibition brings together art that challenges the status quo by using and updating traditional South Asian tropes, idioms, artistic styles, and pop culture.

The art explores the ornamental beauty of South Asia - jewelry, kohl, elaborate outfits - celebrates it, questions it, exaggerates it. What does this outward emphasis on beauty, often holding symbols of gender, religion, caste and class, mean for the artist and the viewer?

The artists featured here are part of a larger cohort of multidisciplinary creators scheduled for the original Popadum! exhibition in 2020. Uprooted by the pandemic, POPADUM! REVISITED finds its home in the I-Hotel Manilatown Center, cradled by the legacy of the struggle by Filipino and Chinese tenants.

Join us for our annual SLIDE SLAM where AAWAA Artists Members and other invited Asian American women artists present their work in a rapid-fire format of 4 slides in 4 minutes. See what these artists have been working on while getting a chance to network with other artists and arts community members.

Join established artist, organizer Nancy Hom and emerging artists, Menaja Ganesh and Greer Nakadegawa-Lee, for a conversation moderated by Laura Fantone, author of Local Invisibility, Postcolonial Feminisms. This intergenerational panel will explore the experiences of Asian American women artists and highlight the impactful contributions they are making in contemporary art, culture, feminism and society at large.

ILLUMINATE is a virtual poetry reading and open mic in response to the rise in Anti-Asian violence and hate crimes, which have increased by 1900% since the start of the pandemic. Open mic will center Asian, Asian American, and BIPOC poets standing in solidarity with the Asian and Asian American community during this time.

ILLUMINATE is co-curated by Greer Nakadegawa-Lee and Lauren Ito. This programming is presented as part of the Political Inheritance Exhibition co-sponsored by the Asian American Women Artists Association, and the Oakland Asian Cultural Center.