Love For Flo Oy Wong - A Tribute
Portrait of Flo Oy Wong taken by her husband, Ed Wong.
It is with very heavy hearts that we share that our incredible co-founder, Flo Oy Wong, passed on April 11, 2026 following some major health complications.
You can read her obituary here.
Flo was beloved by all who met her. Everyone at AAWAA will miss her firebrand energy, outspokenness, curiosity, and warm encouragement. She always used her voice and organized when there was injustice. Over the years, she connected so many Asian and Asian American women artists, creating spaces for everyone to be proud of their own cultures and backgrounds and accepted for who they truly are so that each of us could pursue our passions and reach our full potential.
During her extraordinary career, Flo was a master of reinvention as an educator, artist at 40, curator, and later poet at 75. Her art has been exhibited throughout the US, most notably on Angel Island and at the Smithsonian as well as abroad in China. She published two art books with the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center - "70/30: 70 Years of Living, 30 Years of Art" (2008) and "Flo Oy Wong: The Whole Pie" (2013). On her 80th birthday in 2018, Flo published her book of poems, "Dreaming of Glistening Pomelos".
She was featured in interviews on the documentary AAWAA produced with Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project and directed by Madeleine Lim, "The Worlds of Bernice Bing" (2013). Flo is captured on AAWAA’s oral history series "Pass It On: Birth of A Movement" (2022) along with fellow-co-founder Betty Nobue Kano and founding member Kim Anno telling stories from the organization’s beginnings.
In 2024, the Legacy mural at 723 Webster Street in Oakland Chinatown was painted by artist Desi Mundo based on Flo’s drawings of her family and their restaurant. Andi Wong produced two short documentaries about her - "Tales of the Tofu Goddess: The Artful Life of Flo Oy Wong" (2025), and "Drawn from Life: The Creative Legacy of Flo Oy Wong (2023)" with support from Contemporary Asian Theater Scene. In recent years, she enjoyed performing poetry with her late sister Nellie Wong and San Francisco Poet Laureate Genny Lim as The Last Hoisan Poets.
She continues to be such an inspiration to all our members and will be dearly missed. Her love and legacy shines and lives on in so many of us!
Flo (center) performs with The Last Hoisan Poets (with the late Nellie Wong on left) at the opening of In The Presence of: Collective Histories of The Asian American Women Artists Association exhibition curated by Cristina Hiromi Hobbs at Berkeley Art Center on January 27, 2024. Photo credit: Minoosh Zomorodinia.
AAWAA Members and staff pose with Flo (top row, 3rd from left) at her late sister Nellie Wong’s celebration of life on February 14, 2026 at Oakland Asian Cultural Center. Photo credit: Bob Hsiang