Artist Cynthia Tom has stories to tell about the legacy of a family steeped in the culture of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Drawing from her kin’s long, and sometimes disquieting history, her surrealistic artworks dive into the Asian American experience, especially that of women survivors of generational trauma. More broadly, Tom is a champion for community health and well-being through art.

Though she says she didn’t know art could be a career (she is self-taught), her creative contributions as a self-proclaimed “instigator, educator, cultural curator, and community arts activist” have gained her wide recognition across the country. Getting here entailed a long journey through healing, introspection, and inquiry.

“What is this subculture within the diaspora of the California and San Francisco Bay Area Chinese American–Angel Island culture? What are its icons, its music, food, fashion, its celebrations, religions, and teaching, amongst other things? What do we want to be known for?” These are some of the questions that Tom poses, in conversation with 48hills.

Tom was born in 1958, the middle child between two brothers, and raised a Chinese American San Franciscan, third generation on her mother’s side and second generation on her father’s side. Working with documentation from the National Archives in San Bruno to create her evolving multi-disciplinary project, Anomaly in the Veil, and continuing inquiry for Discards & Variances: Human Trafficking from a Chinese American Perspective, Tom has been exploring her own family narrative vis-à-vis the history of an entire culture.

“In 1923, as a newborn, my father was purchased in China and brought back to the United States by a Chinese American couple based in Oakland. The backstory is that they planned on selling him. During the Chinese Exclusion Act, laborers were not allowed to have wives or family. I am not clear why they bought my father but I was told that they were guilted by the Presbyterian Church in Oakland Chinatown into keeping him. They beat him regularly and often locked him out of their home at night. He was cared for by the ‘hobos’ in the train yard nearby,” Tom said.

Her maternal grandmother, Tom recounts, was sold to her grandfather and shipped from China to San Francisco in the cargo hold of the SS President Lincoln, then was interned and interrogated on Angel Island for three months. Tom says her grandmother was never more than a servant. Tom’s mother did not escape unscathed either: amongst other abuses, Tom’s grandfather sold his daughter regularly for opium from the age of six to 12 years old, an ordeal that ended only when he died, leaving his large family destitute.

“There is a great story of resilience in recognizing the ability of my grandmother to raise seven young children in San Francisco’s Chinatown before the advent of welfare. My heart honors her strength, will and fortitude. My mother was the eldest daughter and worked like she was the second parent,” Tom said.

Tom attended Lowell High School and City College and later, a scholarship granted her entrance to San Jose State University, though she had to quit after one semester when the money ran dry. Eventually transferring to San Francisco State University, Tom worked full-time to support herself while studying. She intended to become a social worker, but started working instead in pharmaceutical sales, which was her primary career for 25 years. Art was something she pursued, albeit diligently, on the side.

“Since I can remember, I created art from found objects and still love it today. I didn’t realize it at the time, but we were poor back in the 1960s and my mother, due to her impoverished childhood and creativity, taught herself and eventually me how to make something from nothing. Neighbors used to give us broken plates and jewelry, unwanted paper, cards, etc. For us, it was like Christmas,” Tom said.

From those humble beginnings, Tom has been able to meld a passion for social justice with her love of the creative arts into projects and philosophies. In 2009, she birthed the idea for the ongoing project, A PLACE OF HER OWN, a program dedicated to healing patterns of ancestral trauma through art, during an artists-in-residency at the de Young Museum,

“My vision is one where every woman finds her voice, her strength, and her place in shaping a world of beauty, resilience, and empowerment,” Tom said.

Working with the Asian American Women Artists Association, where she served as board president, Tom asked nine Asian American artists to use found objects to answer the question “If you had a place of your own, what would it be?” 15 years later, she is still evolving the program and philosophy through intuition and spiritual guidance, influenced in part by therapeutic mentors Gabor Mate, DeAnn Glenn, Steve Nobel, Amy G. Lam, Bronwynn Shaunessy, Mary Waters, and Sylvia LaFair.

“I learned to live inexpensively, using small grants, donations, workshops, lectures, and art sales to keep the work thriving, teaching arts-based transformational processes I’ve used to heal myself and my ancestral family patterns,” Tom said.

Living in the Bay Area contributes to the health and wealth of her work. She cites the region’s openness to ideas and a sense of inclusion as positive attributes.

“If you can dream it, someone will be curious. You are never an outsider. There is always someone or something that helps you feel you belong,” Tom said.

Tom currently resides in San Rafael, but still identifies as a San Francisco artist. She left the city due to rising costs but hopes to return to live here again. She has managed to keep her beloved studio at 1890 Bryant at Mariposa (the original Best Foods Mayonnaise factory), where she revels in the “miraculous blend” of over 100 talented artists whose work she finds fascinatingly unique. Her dedication to the space reflects her commitment to shared resources and networks absent of competition or envy. The planning and creation for Mission Open Studios started in 2005 during a meeting in Tom’s studio, with this year’s annual event taking place on April 12 -13.

“At 1890 Bryant, the cultural diversity and inclusiveness combined with creative professionalism is something to behold. Generosity and enthusiasm is the palpable energy you feel when you visit, it feeds the soul,” Tom said.

Tom says that making a difference in the world, especially for women of color in the United States and all women in the world who are systemically crushed or blocked by cultural, societal and government sanctioned patriarchy, takes primacy in her work.

“In China, women are still denigrated, feminism is a crime. Largely, they either annihilated or sold all their girls and now are having to import women from other countries to marry and procreate,” Tom said.

On the lighter side, she is heavily informed by a quirky and dry British sense of humor that runs in her family, and is tipified in her father. One of the things that tied her to him was watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus together in the 1970s.

“I’ve been able to intuitively incorporate humor and the way I look at the world into my surreal artworks and into how I facilitate working through trauma,” she said.

Tom also attributes her relationship with her parents as nudging her work in other ways. She believes that her father was fundamentally an artist at heart and that her mother quietly taught her to break tradition and “feel her intuition,” though she admits it was by no means easy to detect this from them.

“They were largely silent—Asian silence is a thing, culturally. There are many known and unknown reasons for this lack of communication across most Asian cultures. One is fear of government, but that’s another discussion. Mostly, I was in trouble all the time for challenging them and their expectations, but in hindsight, I now realize they were giving me permission to question some traditions,” Tom said.

Another major influence was JoeSam, an artist in the Hunters Point Shipyard community. Tom says his recent passing in 2024 has left a hole in the community and the world.

“Our studios were in the same hallway for 15 years and visiting was something I looked forward to, often daily. He became a mentor for my ethnic artistic path. In my mid-30s, JoeSam told me that I would never be at my best if I didn’t explore my Asian woman’s identity with my work, and he, of course, was right,” she said.

His words, in fact, led Tom to joining, then leading, the AAWAA—and then to creating art that tells her family’s story.

“By unearthing our history and gaining a deep understanding of my ancestral trauma, I have been able to heal deeply enough to support others with artistic tools for their journey. I am always looking to heal my next layers. It does get easier, the more tools you acquire,” Tom said.

Connection to spirit looms large in her work. Tom says that realizing there is a higher consciousness and recognizing that her family stories are gifts to learn from are important components.

When looking back over the trajectory of her extensive career via old broadcasts and reviews, Tom says she is pleased to see that she remains true to the same community-oriented convictions with which she started.

“My legacy projects are full of ideas and images I’ve collected over the many years of my career, documented and archived. I can see it is all in aid of supporting others to find their voice and passion while releasing old stories and patterns, which are part of our classroom of learning over a lifetime. They inform me/us about what we need to teach/share with others,” she said.

Tom says in her personal life, she is working through financial concerns, fear of becoming insignificant, and health issues with undiagnosable causes.

“Right on top of the pandemic, I was forced to stop working completely due to a concussion. I called it enforced stillness. With help, I learned to mine this seemingly horrible, helpless time for gifts. I learned to recognize who was in the world to help me and who was there to drain me. I learned to accept support and love, which is no small feat, and to ask the question, ‘What if you could lighten your load so you can do the work you were intended for since birth?’” Tom said.

Apart from the bulk of her multifaceted work, Tom is determined to create a clothing line that features her art and philosophy. And the San Francisco Arts Commission and California Arts Council are supporting the legacy of A PLACE OF HER OWN in the form of a written book with origin stories and lessons, with aspirations for an online series of workshops and lectures.

“The goal is to create broader accessibility internationally for these processes and tools that have been working for women. I keep creating projects and platforms for the project alumni to keep piloting, stepping into their healing and leading as they desire. We are slowly steering the extension of some of this work to men,” Tom said.

By inspiring new ways of seeing the world, Tom aims to open doors to unexpected ideas and possibilities, and to offer unique approaches to navigating challenges. She encourages participants to engage in self-inquiry, share their ideas, and find strength in community.

“Ultimately, I hope my work fosters self-love, self-forgiveness, and compassion—both for oneself and for others,” she said.

Tom has lectured for UC Berkeley’s ethnic studies and Asian American art departments, the de Young/Legion of Honor Museums, The National Guild for Community Arts Education, and others. Her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian Archives and the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives. She is the recipient of numerous awards, which she attributes to a growing consciousness for artists who work to support underserved communities of any kind, saying this element is especially strong in the Bay Area. Among recent accolades are the 2024-25 PAAWBAC Women Warrior Award; the California Arts Council Creative Corp Project Award, administered by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in conjunction with the Korean Community Center East Bay’s Clinical Therapy and Internship program; and the Legacy Artist Award through Youth Speaks and the California Arts Council for her work with Asian American clinical therapists. In 2022, she was selected as one of Cantadora Wines, “Women Who Do Extraordinary Things for Community.”

Moving forward, artist-activist Cynthia Tom says she hopes that her work through various channels of exhibitions, workshops, curatorial projects, lectures, and open discussions will spread awareness, encourage compassion, and contribute to the collective journey towards a more just and equitable society.

“I invite people to tilt their heads sideways in curiosity, sparking intuition and offering fresh perspectives,” Tom said. “My works are visual meditations, engaging myself and viewers to challenge the status quo. We can use art to imagine a world where we are empowered, kindness and wonder are commonplace, and curiosity and mistakes are encouraged.” 

For more information about her art, upcoming and archived lectures and workshops, visit her website at cynthiatom.com. Also visit her page on Instagram and her channel on YouTube.