Viet Voices is excited to announce an open call for Southern California’s first national AAPI Emerging Artist Fellowship: Cycle 2, an opportunity for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) artists to engage with the art community and develop their professional practice from September to December 2025. We inspire fellows to contemplate the poetry of our second open call, two words — ANCIENT FUTURE. What does it mean to exercise geographic privilege during international wartime? If bees are extinct, how will we remember the taste of a strawberry? How does one dance for rain, sing for clean water? If time is a spiral, how do we use its richness to reclaim the sovereignty of place and people?
About the Fellowship: The AAPI Emerging Artist Fellowship is an artist-run program designed to support early-career AAPI artists and cultural workers who are at a pivotal stage in their artistic journey. The fellowship provides a nest for the development and presentation of new work while offering professional/personal development workshops alongside local, AAPI artists. We invite fellows to question what gathering looks like in cyberspace, and how to ritualize our (re/un)learning processes while in community. We seek contemporary artists who conceptualize beyond the commercial, and use art making as a pathway towards communal care. We commit to challenge censorship to experiment with the multiplicity of being.
Benefits of the Fellowship:
Exhibition Opportunity: Showcase your work in a group exhibition in San Diego-Tijuana Border Lands with support in developing and documenting your work.
Mentorship: Ongoing mentorship from AAPI artists and arts professionals, including monthly, one-on-one studio visits and co-hort salon-style presentations.
Professional Development: Opportunities to participate in workshops/ceremonies, artist talks, and networking events with fellow artists, curators, and art professionals.
Financial Support: A stipend to support the production of new work, materials, transportation, and/or living expenses for the fellowship period. Each fellow will receive a honorarium of $3,000 disbursed in two partial installments.
Community Engagement: Connect with a network of diasporic artists and art spaces, queering the boundaries and intersections of art in Kumeyaay Land.
Eligibility:
18 years of age or older from any city.
Emerging and early career artists of Asian American, Pacific Islander, and/or Native Hawaiian descent. LGBTQ2S+ identifying folks are strongly encouraged to apply. Artists that are in the early stages of their creative development, not more than 10 years of generative experience (not including any exhibition opportunities provided through a school or college program).
Open to visual art mediums, including but not limited to installation, performance, new media (sound/video/technology), painting, sculpture, photography, and inter/anti-disciplinary work. The fellowship is not intended for commercial artists, musicians, theatre artists, or others whose work is generally not presented in a visual art context.
Fellows are required to attend all monthly scheduled Fellowship development sessions and a weeklong exhibition process in San Diego, CA.
Not participating in a comparable development, fellowship, or residency program at the time of the program.
Committed to addressing issues of diaspora, gender, sexuality, environment, social health, and/or social justice through their artistic practice.
Not a student or enrolled in any degree seeking program at the time of the program .
Not currently a member, employee, or board member of Viet Voices.
How to Apply: To apply for the AAPI Emerging Artist Fellowship, please submit the following materials. We strongly encourage you to use your own language and voice.
Artist Bio + Statement (max 1000 words): Describe your artistic practice, your goals for the fellowship, and why you are applying.
Portfolio: A selection of 5 images or video clips of recent work through file upload or PDF upload. Please name each file “firstname-lastname-title-year”, if not organizing into a PDF format. Performance video URL(s) can be sent through a PDF link or hyperlinked within the portfolio PDF (Youtube and Vimeo preferred with required passwords).
Artist CV
Proposed Project (max 2000 words): Outline the specific project you plan to develop during the fellowship and how it aligns to socially engaging audiences within the Kumeyaay region (San Diego).
Submission Deadline: August 31st, 2025 11:59 PST
Selection Process: The selection process will be based on the quality of artworks, the intentions of proposed work, and the potential impact of the fellowship on the artist’s career (all in relation to the open call theme). Our first virtual cohort session is on September 28th, 2025.
Please note that the AAPI Emerging Artist Fellowship is not a studio program and studio space and lodging is not provided.
For any questions or application support, please email the Fellowship Director & Curator, hamsa fae, at heartofhamsa@gmail.com