Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month : Home

Amanda Phingbodhipakkya is a Multi-Disciplinary Artist. Born in Atlanta to Thai and Indonesian immigrants, Amanda studied neuroscience at Columbia and worked at an Alzheimer’s research lab before becoming a full-time artist, educator, and STEM advocate based in Brooklyn, NY. Her explorations of feminism, science, and community have appeared in museums and galleries, at protests and rallies, on buildings and highway tunnels, as well as on the mainstage of two TED conferences. Her work has appeared in Forbes, Smithsonian Magazine, and the New York Times. NBC has named her one of 26 Emerging Asian American Voices and her AR-enabled portrait series Beyond Curie was named by Fast Company as one of the most innovative products in 2019. She is currently in residence with the NYC Commission on Human Rights. (from her website)
She is currently working on a public art series called "I Still Believe in Our City." In this series of giant public murals in prominent NYC locations, she collaborates with the NYC Commission on Human Rights.
She created a web site to be part of this series: I Still Believe This website has free downloads of her human rights posters with her message Speak up for the Asian American community. You may be an ally standing in solidarity or an Asian American fighting for your right to live with respect and dignity in the face of ongoing harassment and violence against the AAPI community, not just in New York city but across the country. We are offering these posters as free digital downloads. Print them out, bring them to a rally or protest, and make your voice heard.

Photographer and video artist
Filipina American, Photographer, Video Artist is a San Francisco-based visual artist whose work encompasses both individual and collaborative practices. In her solo work, Barrios explores the relationship between physical space, memory and the impermanence of lived experience, using digital media to orchestrate site specific installations and projections. Her collaborative practice includes performance, video and photography engaging with concepts of gender and culture (with M.O.B./Mail Order Brides), and public interventions addressing current social and political issues (with Paz de la Calzada).

Photographer, documentary filmaker and visual artist Filipina-American, Pilipinx, (they.them.theirs.siyá) is a photographer, documentary filmmaker, and visual artist working with collective memory and the decolonial imagination. They recently directed the short film, Maia Cruz Palileo: Becoming the Moon, for PBS American Masters, Firelight Media, & Topic. Ligaiya is currently working on a documentary film about Asian-American activism, called Not Your Model Minority!

Designer and sculptor
Maya Lin is a Chinese American artist. In 1981, while an undergraduate at Yale University, she achieved national recognition when she won a national design competition for the planned the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Roger Shimomura is a Japanese American artist. His paintings, prints, and theatre pieces address sociopolitical issues of ethnicity. He was born in Seattle, Washington and spent two early years of his childhood in Minidoka (Idaho), one of 10 concentration camps for Japanese Americans during WWII.

Ruth Asawa was a Japanese-American sculptor from California. She was one of the first Asian American women in the nation to achieve recognition in a male-dominated discipline. Born to Japanese immigrants, in 1942, her family was sent to an internment camp for six months; while there, she spent time drawing and painting with other artists. Asawa traveled to Mexico City in 1945 to study Spanish and Mexican Art. She is known for creating sculptural baskets out of wire. She died at the age of 87 and had 6 children during her life that were all very much involved in the making of her art.

via University of Washington

via University of Washington

via PBS

via Teen Vogue

via History Channel