CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: AVA Lab 2026 (submissions close 2/16)

Applications due February 16, 2026. Program begins March 26, 2026 with seven weeks of cohort meetings culminating in an group exhibition and summer weekend retreat

Apply Now

please be sure to include work samples that address this year’s exhibition theme “Futures We Carry”

The 2026 AVA Lab is centered on visioning futures that are grounded in history, counter-narratives, and collective power. Led by community artists, scholars, and curators, the program guides artists through art practice as a tool for power building and culminates in an exhibition curated by AVA Lab mentor, Kim Acebo Arteche

This is a 7+ week mentorship and community arts fellowship intended to guide Asian American and Pacific Islander visual artists looking to deepen their praxis in community. This program is intended to move beyond the traditional modes of learning in the arts and focus on not only our artistic practice, but how we as artists work with and within our communities.

  • Community building that examines our relations to land and community:

    • Being a community artist: best practices

    • A resource library for professional development: Writing artist statements, Grant writing & residency applications, Career planning/goal setting

    • Workshops from guest faculty: TBA

    • Selected artists participate in project-based learning through developing the programming and marketing of their culminating exhibition

  • A closing retreat centered around deepening our relationship to land, body, and spirit

Culminating Exhibition

futures we carry

The 2026 AVA Lab exhibition invites artists to share works that imagine futures carried forward through memory, resistance, and collective imagination. We welcome submissions from artists grounded in ancestral & cultural knowledge, working across disciplines whose practices are rooted in lived experience, lineage, and relational ways of working.

Rather than treating the future as speculative or distant, this exhibition understands it as already in motion—embedded in inherited practices, community rituals, survival strategies, and acts of care. We are interested in work that reflects how artists navigate tension, difference, and transformation, and how visions of the future are shaped by accountability, cultural continuity, and community wisdom.

Tuition: $600 (Limited scholarships are available, with one scholarship designated for a visual artist of Pacific Islander descent.)

Application fee is $10 (fee waivers are available upon request)

Important Dates:

  • Applications open: Jan 26- Feb 16

  • Announcements: Feb 23 

  • Program: March 26 - May 16
    Cohort Meetings: Thursday evenings 6:00pm-8:30pm

  • Exhibition: May 16– Jun 13

  • Retreat: July 23-26

Participant Commitment/Schedule

Cohort Meetings: Thursday evenings 6:15-8:30

  • March 26: Meeting 1

  • April 2: Meeting 2 

  • April 9: Meeting 3

  • April 16: Meeting 4

  • April 23: Meeting 5

  • April 30: Meeting 6

  • May 7: Meeting 7

  • May 11-15: Install Week

    • installation schedule TBD

  • May 16 - June 13: Exhibition

    • Exhibition opening: May 16 6-9pm

    • Public programs: Thursday May 28, Thursday June 4

  • Retreat: July 23-26

AVA LabJason Bayani