Issues of social and environmental justice permeate the exhibits at Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station, where there are only a few days left to see eclectic and inspirational collections.
The Project Space is flowing with umbrellas and pillows, an ancestral Chinese wedding outfit and elements of one family’s painful history. Cynthia Tom, a San Francisco-based social justice activist and artist, assembled “Stories to Tell: Discards and Variances,” to relate stories of human trafficking from a Chinese-American family’s perspective.
The exhibit weaves art and stories from three generations into one astonishing experience.
Included are interrogation transcripts of Tom’s maternal grandmother, Hom Shee Mock, from Angel Island Immigration Station. Sold by her family in 1922, she was shipped to the U.S. in the cargo hold of the SS Lincoln, only to be interned and interrogated on the island for three months. Eventually released to her husband—her buyer—she became his servant and bore seven children.
In 1923, Tom’s father, Richard, was purchased at age 1 in China, by an Oakland Chinatown based Chinese-American couple with plans to sell him in the U.S. Instead they abused him for 15 years, until he ran away. As an adult, Richard worked at Chevron for 35 years; in his retirement he became an artist, creating hand-built slab pottery and loving jazz.
Tom includes her art by her mother, Sue Tom, including longhand writings penciled directly on the walls of the gallery, to demonstrate resiliency. Sue was 6 when her father began selling her as the trade for his opium habit; fortunately, her torture ended at 12, when he died of
tuberculosis.
Human trafficking, modern-day slavery that involves the use of force, fraud or coercion to obtain labor or commercial sex, is hidden in plain sight. The Marin Human Trafficking Task Force aggressively investigates this crime.
Tom says her sense of justice began at a young age, as she witnessed neighborhood children being abused. “Through art making, I found a courageous voice to affect change and encourage others to do the same,” she said. In her show, umbrellas are a metaphor for her wish that women and children be protected from suffering and harm, and each pillow, made with prints of family photos, tells a small part of the story.
Concurrently, Diana Marto, a passionate performance and visual artist, activist, and artist-in-residence at Esalen Institute, Big Sur, presents “Golden Room, Canto XXV,” monochromatic paintings, which light up Gallery Route One’s Main Gallery. In the Annex, environmental artist t. c. moore’s reflections are hand-etched, ghost-like reminders of threatened wildlife applied to mirrors, through which you can’t avoid seeing yourself.
All three exhibits end in a closing celebration and salon on Sunday, Oct. 30. The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day but Tuesday.
Peggy Day is a retired E.R. nurse who worked to prevent child sexual abuse and help rape victims in Marin. She lives in Point Reyes Station, grateful to be close to her children and grandchildren.