Created for the Southern California Women's Caucus for Art's 50th Anniversary exhibition, A Place at the Table is inspired by Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party (1974–1979), the landmark feminist installation in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum. While Chicago honored women whose contributions were omitted from history, this work pays homage to the immigrant mothers whose daily acts of care, resilience, and cultural preservation have shaped Los Angeles for generations.

At the center of the installation is a table runner embroidered with the word "mother" in fifty different languages. Each word is individually pinned to the runner, creating a quiet yet powerful tribute to the women who carried traditions, recipes, languages, values, and memories across borders and passed them to the next generation. Though often overlooked, these mothers became the keepers of culture and the foundation upon which immigrant communities built new lives.

I imagine Los Angeles as a shared table—a city built by people who arrived from every corner of the world carrying pieces of home. Every bowl, plate, cup, spoon, glass, textile, and utensil represents a different immigrant community, reminding us that the city's culture was not created by a single voice, but by countless families gathered around countless tables.

The installation is composed of thirty objects collected over the course of just three days from immigrant neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles. Each object was sourced directly from a community representing one of the city's largest immigrant populations by country of birth: the United States, China, Korea, Japan, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Cuba, Brazil, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Armenia, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Thailand, Taiwan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Israel, and the Philippines.

The work embraces the concept of bricolage—constructing new meaning from existing materials. Removed from their original cultural contexts and assembled into a single place setting, these everyday objects become a new visual language. Individually, they speak of heritage and memory; together, they tell the story of Los Angeles itself: a city whose identity has been built through migration, diversity, and the generosity of sharing culture.

A Place at the Table invites viewers to recognize that every culture has a place at the table—and to honor the immigrant mothers whose hands prepared it long before we arrived.