APAture 2026
APAture 2026 Begins on October 17, 2026
More info coming soon
Blog
APAture celebrated its 26th year of bringing together an inspiring community of emerging artists for two weeks of performances and exhibitions across the Bay Area. From October 18th to November 8th, we produced four showcases and an Art Fair in venues including Arc Gallery, SOMArts, and Roxie Theater.
This year, APAture celebrated 25 years of supporting emerging Asian and Pacific Islander artists from across the Bay Area! The APAture General Planning Committee–all volunteers–helped curate, organize, and produce another amazing multidisciplinary arts festival, which featured over 50 artists. Central to the festival was the theme of RETURN.
This year the APAture General Planning Committee came together in May to start discussing their vision for this year’s festival. Many of these folks were new to APAture and to event planning, but they are all passionate Asian Pacific American artists who wanted to build community and support emerging artists in the Bay Area. The end result was a celebration of many different artists, disciplines, and ways of engaging with our community in the Bay Area and beyond.
In line with Kearny Street Workshop’s 50th Anniversary and one of Kearny Street Workshop’s organizing principles, the festival theme chosen was “Autonomy”. As we continue to face the challenges of an ongoing pandemic and the cruel realities of socioeconomic disparity, how do our communities find autonomy in our art, in our practices, in our lived experiences?
In Spring of 2021, a group of KSW volunteers, all emerging artists and cultural workers themselves, began to convene over Zoom to discuss the return of our APAture festival. After more than two years of navigating a global pandemic, fear, and isolation, they felt especially called to create a space that can hold Asian Pacific American artists during this time.