Sandra Honda

She works to elevate less heard voices and stories by invoking historical, contemporary and social narratives. In 2018, she left her career as a speechwriter and scientist to redirect her focus toward using art and writing to interrogate what it means to be Asian and American in today’s America. Informed by the Japanese American experience of ethnically-based mass incarceration during World War II, her drawings, paintings, digital works, assemblages, and installations draw a historical throughline of anti-Asian activities in the U.S. from the 1800s to today. In 2022, she initiated a social practice focused on climate change in which she broadened her toolkit to include sculpture. This climate change-related work draws on her career addressing climate, ocean and science policy through her speechwriting work.