About the Artist

Cynthia Tom Bio / Artist Statement 

Cultural Surrealist | Visual Artist |Speaker and Cultural Community and Women focused Curator | Founding Director of A PLACE of HER OWN and Flying Lessons: Inquire Within workshops and lectures | Board President Emeritus - Asian American Women Artists Association

She is a visual artist (painter, mixed media, found object sculptor, installation, photographer) and curator who explores ancestral patterns, healing, empowerment, spirituality, and feminism through the lens of social justice, community and healing

For 30+ years, Cynthia’s work has promoted a cultural shift to embrace the importance and power of women. She has intuitively focused on the wellbeing of women. African American artist mentor JoeSam inspired her to use her heritage to inform her art practice. She uses her art and curatorial projects to share long-hidden stories of her family and those of other women to encourage the development of intuition, respect for women, self-love and acceptance.

Cynthia works diligently to unravel her ancestral family patterns of trauma, such as human trafficking, and heal from life long racist and gender based micro-aggressions. She realized, as a Chinese girl, she unconsciously accepted being erasable. Cynthia understands the multi-generational depth and breadth of sequelae of believing you are unwanted, undeserving, and unnecessary. She uses art making and exhibitions as the platform to encourage sharing, witnessing and to educate. She does this work through A PLACE OF HER OWN™ (art-based healing program for women of color).

As a Cultural Curator and Community Art Activist, she strives to artistically integrate cultural roots and community needs to drive Social Change. She believes artists have the power to educate deeply at the heart level to create profound changes in how people perceive their communities, encouraging the call for social justice on a soul level.

Her work, both art and curatorial projects are exhibited nationally at The Smithsonian National American Art Archives,  San Francisco - the Legion of Honor, the de Young Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Thoreau Center, SOMArts Cultural Center, California Institute of Integral Studies, Chinese Culture Center; internationally - Surrealismo NOW Exhibition Portugal, Barcelona and, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Rutgers’s University, Los Gatos Museum of Art, Gallery Route One–Pt. Reyes, etc. Her curatorial awards include de Young Museum Artist Residencies, SOMArts Curatorial Fellowship and Asian American Pacific Islander Cultural Center.

Cynthia’s art is a subject of discussion in textbooks, Women Artists’ of the American West, Univ of Purdue, Susan Ressler and Asian American Art in Post-Colonial Times – University of Padua, by Dr. Laura Fantone-Professor SF Art Institute. For both her art and her work in the community, which are inseparable, she has been featured in the New York Time’s SF Arts Monthly, ABC7, SF Chronicle, Psychology Today, CAAM, the Marin Independent Journal, DigitalJournal.com and KPFA and KPOO radio.

Her work and information are archived with the collections of California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives, U.C. Santa Barbara and in the permanent collection, “What is Feminist Art” – Smithsonian National American Art Archives..

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/360847

Photos by Cris Matos