Say hello to the two selected fellows of AAWAA’s Emerging Curators Program 2019-20!

Lauren Ito and Kamardip Singh will curate two multidisciplinary art exhibits at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center and The Galallery in Spring-Summer 2020. Through a series of four (4) guided workshops, weekly check-ins, and hands-on assistance, AAWAA will provide them with mentorship and support for exhibition production from start to finish.

Lauren Ito is a Seattle-born Gosei (fifth generation Japanese American) poet, designer, and community craftswoman committed to advancing equity through art and design. As an artist and organizer Lauren delves into the tensions inherited within diasporic experiences, including explorations of American concentration camps, identity, and home. Lauren’s work has been featured by The Seattle Times, Japanese American National Museum, Nomadic Press, The City is Already Speaking Anthology, and various performance venues, such as the Mission Arts Performance Project, Lit Crawl San Francisco, and Gears Turning. She is a 2019 Grotto Rooted & Written Fellow, 2019 Novalia Collective Fellow, and community-nominated Asian Pacific American Advocates and Japanese American Citizens League Fellow funded to meet with policy makers in Washington DC about immigration, education reform, and the 2020 census.

Throughout her career, Lauren has worked with community-based organizations to tackle issues such as hate crimes, women’s health, and indigenous rights. As a community designer at IDEO, Lauren designs global programs that support leaders and entrepreneurs scale social innovation through collaborative design. Her projects span expanding racial representation in early childhood literature, the future of mobility in cities, and accelerating entrepreneurs of color with Stanford University, to name a few.

In her latest project, Lauren partnered with San Francisco Poet Laureate, Kim Shuck, to curate an intergenerational poetry production featuring Bay Area artists of Japanese ancestry. She is currently working on her first manuscript, and a public art series celebrating the resilience of San Francisco's place-based communities through poetry. Lauren lives in San Francisco and can almost always be found by the sea.

Kamardip Singh is a restless artist fascinated by people, prose, and poetry. She wears clashing colors often. Her favorite form of travel is 2nd class sleeper on Indian Railways and she's had some of her best nights of sleep on the top berth. Sula by Toni Morrison is her favorite book, although she is not monogomous with her literature and artistic loves.

She focuses on South Asian and feminist themes, with a particular focus on portraiture of South Asians musicians creating sound with rare Hindustani and Carnatic instruments.

She's constantly bewildered by the world.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Designed to remove barriers to entry for would-be curators, and increase exhibition opportunities for Asian Pacific American (APA) women artists, the Emerging Curators Program is designed for women curators of color who are interested in curating exhibition themes relevant to APA women artists. See previous exhibitions from past emerging curators and learn more about the program here.

WORKSHOPS

Join us at the ECP workshops, open to the public to attend!

Session #1 - Curation & Exhibition Planning
Saturday, November 2 / 11am-2pm
AAWAA Studio (1890 Bryant St, Ste #302, SF)

Session #2 - Fundraising & Marketing + Publicity
Saturday, November 9 / 2-4pm
The Secret Alley (180 Capp St, SF)

Tickets are $20. Free for AAWAA Members.