About

About me

I’m Jo A. Wong, a Miami-based artist of Latin-Asian heritage, born and raised in Panama.

My art celebrates her cultural roots and nature’s resilience, adaptation, and determination, capturing wildlife and natural elements thriving against odds.

I gravitate towards creating acrylic paintings on canvas and silk brocade, clay on wood, and art installations and facilitating creativity workshops to advocate for art and mental health.

My art has been featured in corporate collections and public installations such as the Laser Cat sculpture at the Bass Museum in Miami Beach.

I'm drawn by cultural and natural biodiversity. I's not a surprise that my art reflects Miami and Panama as muses.

Love for the tropics

I’m enamored by culture and nature, and how they intersect. My art is inspired from my tricultural upbringing surrounded by the Panama Canal rainforest (then U.S. territory) and education at a Panamanian-Taiwanese school, which inspired my art from early on.

Every day, the school bus picked my siblings and I, crossing the rainforest on the way to school. This was the beginning of my education. I would pull out my notebook and pencil, drawing as our bus moved across the greenery and luscious road, absorbing the sights.

The rainforest gifted sightings of multicolored plants, reindeer, monkeys, toucans, sloths, and other animals that now inspire my art.

As an adult, I now try to spend as much time as possible outdoors, whether swimming, hiking, or paddling, making Miami the perfect home .

I’m drawn to its subtropical sights: peacocks roaming the streets, beautiful beaches and ample streets surrounded by tall oak trees bordered by Spanish moss, and people who are connected to their multicultural identities and to each other.

My art explores identity, resilience, and joy.

I’m the Latina descendant of Chinese immigrants who made Panama home four generations ago, I have navigated complex family mental health struggles and personal loss. Through everything, art has become a dear friend, showing me how pain and joy can dance together.

I transform resilience and identity into art, exploring: how can we be more like nature? in what ways can we root ourselves to have the grit to thrive?