Artist Talk: August 3rd, 6-8pm  |  Exhibition Dates: August 4th – October 15th  |  Opening Reception: August 4th, 6-9pm | OCA Gallery

This exhibition presents fiber-based installations by San Francisco-based artist Holly Wong, whose work aims to reclaim the female body and reveal beauty in brokenness. Wong’s work is embedded with past traumas and mourning; it memorializes her mother, who was a victim of domestic and sexual violence, as well as the artist’s own experience with mental illness related to self-harm and body-related trauma. As a whole, the work’s weightlessness and ephemeral quality represents her emergence from this pain with acceptance and celebration. As the artist has described it, the central installation’s boundless presence is a powerful reclamation of feminine strength:

“With Guardian of the Spirits, I have created my alter ego; the same one that all women contain. The bigger, stronger, more-powerful self that we can’t see, but it’s there. It’s loving, and protecting. And it takes up space. It claims space. It says, ‘I am here.’ It is expansive. It has no limitations.”

Artist Bio

Holly Wong lives and works in San Francisco, California. She was educated at the San Francisco Art Institute where she graduated with a Master of Fine Arts with a concentration in New Genres. Holly creates installations and assemblages, integrating non-traditional approaches with more traditional sewing techniques associated with the history of women. Her approach is both non-conventional but also deeply rooted in her history and culture. She has been awarded visual arts grants from the Integrity: Arts and Culture Association, Barbara Deming Memorial fund, the George Sugarman Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, and a Gerbode Foundation purchase award. Holly has participated in over 80 exhibitions including group shows at the de Young Museum San Francisco, the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, and Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Art. She is represented by SLATE Contemporary Gallery in Oakland, California, ELLIO Fine Art in Houston, TX, and is a member of A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, New York.