San Francisco Bay.
The body of water I’m referring to is the San Francisco Bay, especially surrounding Angel Island. My name is Cynthia Tom. I’m a third generation Chinese American, and the story has to do with the healing I’ve been doing on myself, working through ancestral family patterns of trauma, to heal, the unconscious emotions that I still struggle to make conscious to release. I am finding out with the guidance of intuitive healers that it’s tied to my grandmother’s DNA and the fear that she had being sold in China and brought here to the US by my grandfather, who was also Chinese, but he was born here. And the other person I’ve been working on mainly is my great grandmother. They both came in around the 1920s my great grandmother was sent here after her husband, my great grandfather here in the US died. She was sent here from China. She had bound feet, and I’m healing through all the trauma around being a woman with absolutely no say in what happens to your body and the rest of your life and the water is both healing, joyful, restful, peaceful, and also carrying these memories that I am releasing and healing through. Thank you for listening
Cynthia Tom • she/her • San Francisco of Chinese descent
Cynthia Tom’s art career spans over 40 years as a visual artist, curator, and cultural community instigator and women-focused activist. She’s known for her work in cultural surrealism, using mixed media and installation art to explore themes of ancestral patterns, healing, empowerment, and social justice. Her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian Archives and the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives. She’s the founding director of A PLACE of HER OWN, an arts-based healing and transformational program for women of color and community PLACE addresses generational family patterns of trauma due to colonization, war, forced migration and patriarchy. Tom has been an active advocate for social change, fostering dialogue and building community through her art and curatorial projects.
