when he cries he looks like me — Minnesota Street Project Foundation

Public Opening Reception:
Saturday, January 17, 5-7pm

Location: Exhibition Warehouse, 1201 Minnesota Street

Exhibition Warehouse Hours:
Thursdays & Fridays, 3-7pm
Saturdays,12-6pm
Additional viewing hours on Thursday, January 22, 6-9pm

when he cries he looks like me explores quilting as care to create a soft archive that preserves and reinterprets intergenerational experiences. Bringing together new and existing large-scale sculptural quilts by mother-and-son artist duo May Gaspay and Mik Gaspay, the exhibition navigates the entangled layers of memory, migration, and family history in a bid for connection that extends across oceans and generations.

Transforming fabric into vessels for storytelling and healing, when he cries he looks like me prompts a collective reflection on the ways familial histories and inherited narratives are cared for and carried forward.

This presentation marks the culmination of the second iteration of the Warehouse Residency, a program launched to provide Bay Area artists at all career stages the dedicated time and space to create conceptually and physically ambitious new work.

Mother-and-son artist duo May Gaspay (b. 1953, Cagayan, Philippines; lives in Palo Alto, CA) and Mik Gaspay (b. 1976, Quezon City, Philippines; lives in Kensington, CA) established their collaborative practice in 2020. Reflecting sites and objects of personal and cultural significance, their large-scale quilted works and installations explore memory, migration, and family histories. Transforming fabric into vessels for storytelling, they translate inherited and shared narratives in an act of preservation and care.

Public Programs

Quilting as Care, a conversation between artists May Gaspay and Mik Gaspay, and Kathy Nguyễn, moderated by Shona Mei Findlay
Tuesday, January 20, 6-7pm

As part of the exhibition when he cries he looks like me, artists May Gaspay and Mik Gaspay will be joined in conversation with Kathy Nguyễn, Co-Executive Director of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN), a non-profit organization centering the narratives of diasporic Vietnamese people through storytelling. Moderated by Shona Mei Findlay, writer, curator, and Associate Director for Asia at KADIST, the conversation will delve into the artists’ practice of quilting as care and the potential of their work to preserve family history and inherited narratives.

After the program, visitors are invited to explore the exhibition, which will be open until 8pm.

Kathy L. Nguyễn is Co-Executive Director of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN), a literary arts nonprofit based in San Francisco. She is co-editor of Troubling Borders: An Anthology of Art and Literature by Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora and was the editor of Nhà, an award-winning Vietnamese diasporic arts & culture magazine. Her editing credits also include This Is All I Choose To Tell: History and Hybridity in Vietnamese American Literature and Once Upon A Dream: The Vietnamese-American Experience. A writer, editor, and educator, she taught Interdisciplinary Studies—Asian American Studies, History, Literature & Film—at San Francisco City College and Berkeley City College. Her work appears on NPR, KQED, and KALW, and in print in Fourteen Hills, Fringe, Women’s World, diaCRITICS, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and an MA in Asian Studies from the East-West Center, University of Hawai’i. Kathy is a recipient of grants and fellowships from the San Francisco Arts Commission, Hedgebrook, Vashon Artists Residency, Tin House, and the Community of Writers.

Shona Mei Findlay is a Singaporean curator based in San Francisco. She is Associate Director for Asia at KADIST and was part of the founding team of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Residencies Programme, Singapore. Her recent projects include Threads of Kinship (KADIST Paris and He Art Museum, Shunde, China), A Woman You Thought You Knew (KADIST San Francisco), and exhibitions and programs featuring artists including Wang Tuo, Pio Abad, and Jeamin Cha. Her curatorial practice engages feminist and decolonial frameworks, focusing on Southeast Asian and diasporic perspectives. She is particularly interested in how artists navigate memory, displacement, and transnational belonging through material and embodied forms.

Closing Reception
Saturday, January 31, 3-6pm

Bring your family, friends, and loved ones, pose for a “family portrait” taken by photographer Lizzy Myers, and join May Gaspay, Mik Gaspay, and their extended family in celebrating the final day of when he cries he looks like me.

The artists wish to gratefully acknowledge Lleva Abenes, Sandi Adger, and Brenda Ziegler for their quilt production support.
Exhibition identity by Savithri Velaga