A PLACE OF HER OWN is a multi-disciplinary project of the Asian American Women Artists Association. Cynthia Tom is the founder and curator of this long term project. This art for Altered Barbie is created by some of the A PLACE artists.

A Place of Her Own asks women to examine and express what is most important in their lives and to mentally sweep away all extraneous rules and outside expectations to discover what has significant meaning to them alone. The process of answering this question within a multi-disciplinary arts platform garners deep internal and external dialog amongst participating artists and the community. The question provides inspiration for powerful work and for important ongoing conversation.

“It's not just a matter of asking ‘what do I want for myself?’ but rather a matter of letting go of external influences and discovering what remains.”

Nancy Hom

A Place of Her Own 2010 Artist

“A Place of Her Own importantly asks women to think big by imagining the world we truly want for ourselves.” For an Asian American woman “the act of imagining a place of her own becomes akin to an act of bravery because it compels women to challenge and to think beyond others’ preconceived notions…” 

This exhibit, created and organized by the San Francisco-based artists’ foundation Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA), expands Virginia Woolf’s 1929 statement, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” to include women of a diverse array of socio-ethnic backgrounds beyond the middle class white women of Woolf’s essay. AAWAA expands those parameters to go beyond the concept of room to discover a place, in which the limitations are bound by the imagination and nothing more?