Brown Palms, Yellow Balms – AAWAA April 24 – May 25, 2025 SOMArts San Francisco, CA

I am very honored to have been invited to participate in the “Brown Palms, Yellow Balms: Reinventing Caregivers of Color” exhibition co-presented by AAWAA (Asian American Women Artists Association) and APICC (Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center) for the 28th Annual United States of Asian America Festival (USAAF). The show opens on Thursday, April 24, 2025 6-9 pm and runs thru May 25 at the SOMArts Cultural Center Main Gallery in San Francisco, California.

I created the watercolor “Self Portrait with Jasmines, Sweetpeas and Woman and Child” especially for the show. The arrangement of the woman’s hand and the child’s are modeled after a Joos van Cleve Madonna and Child, an image celebrating care and nurturing. The jasminum sambac, commonly known as the sampaguita in the Philippines is representative of Filipino caregivers. The sweetpea flowers are traditional symbols of friendship and gratitude. The intertwined flora are also personal to me. As a Filipino American, the sampaguita is symbolic of my childhood and Philippine identity while the sweet pea flowers are associated with my current home here in Santa Fe–the wild sweetpeas exuberantly line the narrow banks of the Santa Fe River in summer and are a visual source of comfort and replenishment. The painting is available for purchase. Please message me to inquire and I will get you contact details.

Can brown palms and yellow balms cure the planet’s deepest wounds? The caregiver— she who opens a newborn’s eyes and closes the eyes of the dying—remains overwhelmingly female and disproportionately a person of color. Fate casts Asian and Asian American women into a culture of service, entrapping them as designated doulas, named nannies, and overburdened overseas workers—sacrificial figures dissolving self for the sake of family. The gender bias is familiar; the lopsided burden these women are expected to bear not examined enough.
The Brown Palms, Yellow Balms: Reinventing Caregivers of Color exhibition unfolds in ever-expanding circles of caregiving, mirroring the Buddhist Metta practice—beginning with the body as the most intimate site of care and spiraling outward to embrace family, community, collective archetypes, deities, and the environment.
Immerse yourself in depictions of nurturing, nursing, birthing, mothering, mending, comforting, restoring, resuscitating, protecting, soothing, cheering, reclaiming, and empowering—not just the Self, but Society and the Cosmos—all viewed through the lens of AAPI cultural heritage, history, and socio-political landscapes.
Celebrate with us the ancestral wisdom and cultural practices, poultices and potions, talismans and taboos, superstitions and spiritual practices, deities and demons that keep our spirits fierce, shape our bonds, and keep both humanity and the planet afloat.
-O.M. France Viana, Lead Artist & Curator