APAture 2026 Visual Arts Closing Reception
APAture 2026: GENERATION | Visual Arts Showcase feat. Ruby Chen, Serena Chen, Aamna Dhillon, Jude Paul Dizon, Laura Dudu, Negah Farrokh, Ping Gong, Timothy Guan, Caroline Huh, Julie Kamlesh Kumar, Jessica Kwong, Diana Li, Susan Lin, Connie Liu, Trisha Mah, Emma Ng, Faustina Ngo, Ngoc Nguyen, Breana Parks, Momoko Schafer, Norman Sheu, Asha Sudra, Nova Davina Suselo, Rena Tom, Khôi Nguyen Trinh, Jun Yan, and Anastasia Yang
Curated and arranged by Cynthia Salazar, Rebecca Lee, and Winola Hamdan
December 12, 2026 12:00 - 3:00 PM (PDT)
Arc Gallery & Studios 1246 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA
Free/$60 All-Access Pass (entry to all ticketed events with free t-shirt, drink tickets, and more!)
This year’s theme is GENERATION. At this pivotal moment for APAture, we turn our focus toward what we inherit, what we cultivate, and what we pass on. GENERATION asks us to seed growth for the future health of our communities while honoring the artistic lineages that have brought us to this moment. As we consider what the next generation of artists will hold and shape, we also recognize our role in tending the conditions that allow them to thrive. With the health of our communities in mind, we celebrate creative inheritance as an active, collective practice—one that bridges past, present, and future through art. We invite artists to reflect on GENERATION in all its meanings: a place of ancestry, mentorship, responsibility, and renewal.
Participating Visual Artists
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.