The ARROZidency program awards fully sponsored residencies to local, national, and international Filipino/a/x/ American artists, writers and curators each year. Project space and artist residencies are offered at the studio of O.M. France Viana at the Minnesota Street Project Studios in San Francisco.

Artists selected for this program are emerging to mid-career artists and recent MFA graduates who require a studio space to complete a project or prepare for an exhibition. Artists selected may work in all media, including drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, film, video, installation, fiction and nonfiction writing, poetry, dance, music, social practice, and curatorial practice.

Mission

ARROZidency aims to

·      Provide Filipino/a/x artists with the support and opportunity to explore, experiment, innovate and co-create a new vision of FilAm identity.

·       Gather together a network of creative practitioners, thinkers, community leaders and cultural professionals to redefine the role of the FilAm aesthetic in the broader cultural landscape.

Program Details

·       Fully sponsored 4–8-week residencies at the Studio of O.M. France Viana at Minnesota St. Project, 1240 Minnesota Street San Francisco,

·       Facilities available at MSP studios include: Large format printers; Woodshop facilities; Darkroom; Computers and Scanners; Wi-Fi; Kitchen communal area

·       Bi-weekly meals and socials with Fil Am community leaders

·       Introductions to curators, critics, gallerists and leaders of the FilAm community

·       Participation in the vibrant artist community at Minnesota Street Project

·       Reservable exhibition space at the residency facilities, subject to availability

·       All AIR artists are subject to rules and regulations of the Minnesota Street Project Studios

Eligibility

• Emerging Filipino/a/x descent and/or a body of work promoting FilAm culture

Selection Criteria

Currently by invitation only and curator recommendation.

ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE AWARDEES AND EVENTS

 Lian Ladia and England Hidalgo (July-August/2021)

Exhibition (8/28 –9/25/2021): “The Land Is Too Valuable To Permit Poor People to Park on It”- Curators: Erica Wall Executive Director, MCLA Arts & Culture; Malou Babilonia Founder, PUSOD; Babilonia 1808

Lian Ladia’s video installation, “We Say You Deserve Better,” illustrates how an area of a city is described, valued, labeled, and even re-labeled has been historically cloaked in hollow rhetoric that suggests better conditions for those living in substandard housing. England Hidalgo’s installation rubbings of street names on rice paper scrolls, “The Blighted and Valuable Streets of South of Market” maps all the streets that make up the SOMA Pilipinas cultural district. It serves to guide us through yet also reminds us of the constant struggle to navigate and negotiate space and home. This body of work by Ladia and Hidalgo represents the collective of voices that strive to inform, teach, and disseminate the histories of immigrant communities.”

Lian Ladia and England Hidalgo were born and raised in the Philippines and are now based in San Francisco.  Past projects include Helsinki International Art Program and radio broadcast “When System Fails” on autonomous organizing systems addressing alternatives how anarchists and punk musicians respond to ecological disasters in Helsinki, Tokyo and Manila. Currently both Ladia and Hidalgo are researching the history of land use in the U.S. with the prime example of the development of the Yerba Buena Center, and the impact of urban renewal to working class and immigrant people in the South of Market.

https://www.englandhidalgo.com/

https://ybca.org/person/lian-ladia/ and https://500cappstreet.org/people/staff/lian-ladia/

ARROZ CALDO AT THE ARROZidency

The first of many ritual community feasts for celebrating Artists in Residence, exchanging ideas and hanging out at the “tambayan” wall.

Kimberly Acebo Arteche and Josh Icban (November 2021)

Kim and Josh will collaborate to build creative research and scholarship on the traditions and influence of kundiman, the classic form of the Filipino love song, and its influence on gendered expectations and body sovereignty in Pilipinx diasporic experiences.

Kimberley Acebo Arteche is an educator, cultural worker, and interdisciplinary artist. Arteche received her BFA from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and MFA from San Francisco State University, where she received the School of Art’s Distinguished Graduate award. She is a co-director of the Berkeley Art Center, the co-founder of Balay Kreative, and has served on Southern Exposure’s Curatorial Council, SOMA Pilipinas’ Arts & Culture Committee, and was the Visual Arts curator for UNDISCOVERED SF. She is an adjunct professor of Photography at San Francisco State University's School of Art. https://www.kimacebo.art/

Josh Icban is a proud son of Vallejo, CA. His original works have been showcased in spaces such as Counterpulse Theater, the Asian Art Museum, Bindlestiff Studios, Dance Mission and FRINGE MANILA ARTS FESTIVAL. His music embraces the possibilities inherent in the ever changing world of music technology, utilizing sound sampling, field recording and synthesis while honoring techniques and vernaculars of pedagogues past. Josh holds an MA in ethnomusicology, writing his thesis, KAPWA in the land of milk and honey: Bay Area Filipino American identity community and music, on the generational contributions of Filipino-American musicians and immigrants to California culture and society. https://www.joshicban.com/

Mel Vera Cruz (Project Space Feb 2022)

Mel Vera Cruz illustrated the “Heroes in the Window” mural project at the Bayanihan Center on 6th and Mission San Francisco, featuring FilAm heroes and sheroes. At the ARROZidency, Mel repurposed the original stencil of Carlos Villa used on the façade to create a  painting diptych on canvas, and later painted live at the Asian Art Museum https://www.somcan.org/newsletter/2019/11/20/heroes-in-our-windows-looking-at-the-making-of-a-mural-in-the-south-of-market

Cristine Blanco—MFA residency awardee (July 2022)

Cristine Blanco is first MFA graduate ARROZidency residency awardee. Cristine Blanco is an interdisciplinary artist and educator who works in painting, sculpture and installation. Blanco’s works take environmental injustices, the precarity of resources, and familial story as their starting point. Blanco was born and raised in the Bay Area, Ohlone Land and holds an M.F.A. in Studio Art from Mills College. She is a recipient of California Arts Council Individual Fellowship and a Murphy Cadogan Award. In 2021-22, she was a Print Public Artist-in-Residence at Kala Art Institute. Blanco has exhibited works at the Berkeley Art Center, Kala Art Institute, and SOMArts Cultural Center.

At the ARROZIdency, Christine “dedicated time and space for experimentation. Drawing from my lineage and relationship to land, my work is in dialogue with material of local and ancestral origins. While in the studio, I am thinking about climate change as it relates to home and identity and how to offer different possibilities through the nurturing care of labor intensive processes.” https://www.cristineblanco.com/

Rachel Lastimosa, Charito Soriano, Patricia Ong Barretto, Jeffrey Yip, Flex Dalit, Lisa Melnick- the AGASAN COLLECTIVE. (August 2022)

AGASAN collective explores the depth of expression and our connection to wellness through arts as an integrative practice. At the ARROZidency residency, AGASAN offered three Acts of Self Preservation, interactive offerings to address ancestral trauma. https://www.agasan.org/offerings

8/6/22: Visual Arts. Discover methods for feeling forms through various activities in visual art by trusting intuition and sensory play.

8/13/22: Movement. Warm up and get in tune with your body to create an expressive experience. Utilize the power of phrase and repetition to tell your story through embodied movement.

8/20/22: Sound. Connect to meditative and relaxing space and build collective energy with sound using voice and instruments. Play with resonance and ground oneself with the power of frequency.

WILFRED GALILA AND IAN TAIPAN LUCERO (October 2022)

            At their residency, Wil and Taipan explored bringing the ancient script of Baybayin back to cultural relevance. Taipan was our first international artist from the Philippines.

Wilfred Galila makes use of various media for storytelling and art making as a means of gaining a deeper understanding of postcolonial identity and culture through a transpacific diasporic lens, framework, and experience. Galila is the lead artist for Kodakan: Pilipinos in the City, a photography and media project that explores the diverse identities of Filipinos in San Francisco through time. He collaborated with multi-awarded dance artist Alleluia Panis on the multimedia dance theater productions, Belly of the Eagle: Man@ng is Deity, She, Who Can See , and Incarcerated 6×9 and the dance film She, Who Can See. His writing was published in Beyond Lumpia, Pansit and Seven Manongs Wild, an anthology of Filipino American prose and poetry and in Milvia Street Art and Literary Journal of Berkeley City College. Galila was nominated for a 2019 Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Visual Design.

Ian Taipan Lucero earned a BFA in Fine Arts from the University of the Philippines and has received grants from National Commission for Culture and the Arts. He writes, “My art and advocacy is "CalligraFilipino", a portmanteau of "Calligraphy" and "Filipino". It is the artistic representation of our ancestral scripts such as Baybayin, Badlit, Kulitan, among others, wherein the characters are molded into forms reminiscent of our traditional cultural elements such as the Lingling-o fertility charm of the Cordilleras, the rhythmic tattoo patterns of the Pintados, the colorful curvilinear Okir of the Maranao. The aim of CalligraFilipino is to contribute in nation building by helping ignite a cultural renaissance: a renewed interest in our culture that may ultimately aid in the upliftment of our society.”

ARROZ CALDO SALO-SALON at the ARROZidency (Oct 2022)

Now an institution this ARROZ Caldo event was a Triple Treat celebrating:

·      Asian American Women Artist Association (AAWAA) monthly studio hours and member show and tell  

·      ARROZidency October artists in residence welcome and workshops

·      A ritual for Moira. I will be performing a one minute ritual/send off for our beloved Moira Roth, co-founder of AAWAA, whom I had the privilege of knowing as her research assistant, student, and friend. I never got to do the ritual as scheduled when her Mills memorial was cancelled due to COVID—when better than with her AAWAA friends.