Detail of a watercolour from Al-An deSouza's Table Settings

Asian Art MuseumCivic Center, San Francisco

Al-An deSouza: Table Settings

Closes this week9 April 2026 – 2 November 2026$20

A tea-stained watercolour project linking the museum's galleries to overlooked beauty in the cracks, stains and markings of city streets.

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On now All of October 2026

Somewhere in these 24 panels is the imprint of a Lincoln penny. Nearby sit the rings of a manhole cover, the walking figure from a pedestrian signal and loops like a Spirograph's. Al-An deSouza found them looking down on walks, then painted at a living room table. Each session began with a pot of tea, and the leftovers became that day's first layer.

The panels hang in two rows of twelve, nearly 19 feet long, mixing street marks with shapes from the museum's galleries, inside a border reading ex uno pluria, "from the one to the many". deSouza chose watercolour as the amateur "Sunday" painter's medium, "a technique of more or less controlled staining." You read it up close. It was made walking with eyes on the ground, a skill most of Market Street has mastered with a phone in hand.

It is one work in the South Asian Galleries, closing 2 November. Museum admission is $20, free for 12 and under, and Thursdays run until 8 PM.

Look for

The Lincoln penny
Look for the transfer imprint of a penny pressed into the paint, one of the street finds deSouza brought back to the table.
The manhole cover
Its circular pattern turns up among the panels, recognisable from the pavement the artist photographed on walks.
The pedestrian signal
The striding figure from a crosswalk signal walks through the watercolour among cracks, stains and road markings.
The ex uno pluria border
A border of symbols and the words "from the one to the many" runs around all 24 panels and holds the chaos together.
The tea ground
Each day's painting started on the remnants of that session's pot of tea, so the first stains on every panel are tea.