“To emerge from the culture of silence is to find one's voice, to rewrite the self and to become visible.” – Leny Mendoza Strobel, in her book Babaylan

A PLACE OF HER OWN, or PLACE, an art collective of women and people who are non-male-identified, recently opened its latest gallery exhibit in Oakland, California. PLACE empowers participants by helping them engage in culturally conscious art-making through self-reflection, found objects, and community formation. This 2024 exhibit features 24 artists in a variety of media, most of them using found objects to relate stories of intergenerational and cultural trauma and emotional transmissions. The artist talk held on August 18, 2024, left many in tears as the audience received the artists’ journeys and reflections on family, trauma, and cultural oppressions. (More on PLACE here, and link to a gallery of photos of the current exhibit here.)

I sat down with my friend, founding director, artist, curator, and workshop leader Cynthia Tom to discuss PLACE. The video interview is appended below, and this is an edited, excerpted transcript.

Tell me about A PLACE OF HER OWN.

A PLACE OF HER OWN is a lot of different things. Mainly art-based workshops, lectures, and art exhibitions using found objects to work through ancestral patterns of trauma and release it using art or at least become conscious of it.

What is “ancestral pattern shifting"?

It’s looking at anything........

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