AAWAA Exhibit

Asian American Women Artists Association and Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center Present:
Brown Palms Yellow Balms: Reinventing Caregivers of Color

SOMARTS Gallery
934 Brannan, San Francisco
April 25 – May 25, 2025

My Life is Adventure
TEXT-TILE: Annie Caliao “My Life is Adventure”, print on linen, wood pole,108” x 58” , 2025

Corrugated Memories: Jesus Chris of Dirty Clothed, ceramic, 14” x 16”, 2023

Corrugated Memories: Caliao Forever Souvenir, ceramic, 15” x 12”, 2023

Anecita Caliao Memoir Box, Table, Box, blanket, photos, copy of original memoir, 40”x 30” x 20”,

Anecita Caliao Interview, soundfile, 2025

ARTIST STATEMENT

Anecita Caliao came to work for my family in Malate, Manila when I was 5 years old. She was 16.  She and her sister Cresing lived with us for 10 years and we have been connected ever since.  In 2020 Anecita or Annie, who has lived in the US for many years now, handwrote her 103 page memoir, “My Life is Adventure”. She gave  her only copy to my sister Margaret tucked into a gift box of food wrapped in a blanket she had crocheted. With no schooling beyond the 6^th grade this book is the first person voice of a caregiver, OFW, who has traveled the world working for different families in Manila, Europe and finally settling in America. This installation presents Annie’s book as a Text-tile. The Text-tiles, are text excerpts printed on fabric selected from books about lives affected by imperial wars, authoritarian imaginary and resistance layered into patterns based on traditional Philippine weavings.  For this exhibit about caregivers Anecita’s book offers a rare narrative by a woman who made the choice to leave her home at a young age, at great risk, shape her own life in search of financial security, independence and adventure.
The installation will also include’s Corrugated Memories ceramic works that mix excerpts of Anecita’s memoir text with a photo of her working and a singular family photo taken in their house on Bohol Island.  Here is a recording by Margaret Poethig and the memoir:

. Anecita Caliao Memoir

CURATOR STATEMENT
Can brown palms and yellow balms cure the planet’s deepest wounds? The caregiver— she who opens a newborn’s eyes and closes the eyes of the dying—remains overwhelmingly female and disproportionately a person of color. Fate casts Asian and Asian American women into a culture of service, entrapping them as designated doulas, named nannies, and overburdened overseas workers—sacrificial figures dissolving self for the sake of family. The gender bias is familiar; the lopsided burden these women are expected to bear not examined enough.