Terry Acebo Davis

Terry Acebo Davis (born 1953) is a Filipino American artist and nurse based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her art is thematically linked to her family and her origins as a Filipino American.

Early life and education Born in Oakland, California, the oldest of six children, Acebo Davis gained a Bachelor of Science in nursing from California State University, Hayward in 1976, followed by graduate coursework in Pediatric Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco. In 1991 she was awarded a Bachelor of Fine Arts by San Jose State University, followed by an MFA in 1993.

Career Artistic themes and works Acebo Davis's art is heavily rooted in her origins as a Filipino American, her family, and racial strife and collision. Dahil Sa Yo, her "seminal work", features repetitive images of her mother set behind multiple boxes of shoes, drawing on the public persona of Imelda Marcos.

Benjamin Pimentel of the San Francisco Chronicle states “The marks she makes chronicle her many journeys an Asian American woman, a caregiver and an artist.”

Community engagement Acebo Davis has served as Chairwoman of the Palo Alto Public Art Commission; as a Trustee for Arts Council Silicon Valley; board president and Advisor for WORKS/San Jose.

She is a member of the DIWA Filipino artists' collective, and regularly lectures on the Filipino identity, including lectures at the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Pennsylvania and Mills College.

In 2004 she became the first Filipino American to exhibit art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco's Samsung Hall, where her piece Tabing Rising, visually describing her family's immigration to the United States in 1945, was displayed in 2004.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

2009 Tri-age, Triton Museum, Santa Clara, CA 2007 Gawa sa Belgium, Ayala Foundation, Redwood City, CA 2005 Tracing Ritual, Cabrillo College Gallery, Aptos, CA 2004 Tabing Rising, Asian Art Museum Samsung Hall, San Francisco, CA 2004 Anatomy of Spirit, Stanford University - Institute on Women & Gender, Stanford, CA 2003 Diwata, Babilonia 1808, Berkeley, CA 2001 Nepal and Black, Washington Square Gallery, San Francisco, CA

1998 New Work, Washington Square Gallery, San Francisco, CA