Voicing our Visions: Artist Statement Writing Workshop
Mentor: Kimberley Acebo Arteche

This workshop is designed to help artists from refugee and immigrant communities craft powerful, authentic artist statements that reflect their unique journeys, identities, and creative visions. Participants will explore ways to articulate their artistic practices, cultural influences, and personal narratives in a way that resonates with audiences, funders, and institutions. Recognizing the barriers artists from marginalized backgrounds often face in navigating the art world, this workshop will provide a supportive and affirming space to develop statements that honor one’s voice and lived experiences. 

Demystifying Grants for Artists
Mentor: Weston Teruya

After an overview of where grants sit in the spectrum of resources we access as artists, we will write about our practices, the context for what we create, and share feedback with one another.

Community Building Through Art
Mentor: Christine Wong Yap

We’ll explore community-based art through guided discussions, reflective writing/drawing activities, and a presentation with examples from Christine’s 20+ years of projects as a visual artist and social practitioner.  

Exploring History and Migration Through Materiality
Mentor: Trina Michelle Robinson

How can developing a deeper relationship to the materials you use in your art practice impact your work? Focusing on materiality can uncover lost or forgotten narratives while also gaining a deeper understanding and connection to our past, present and future. In my personal art practice, I do this by working with organic materials such as hibiscus flowers from Senegal, Goldenrod from Kentucky, soil from my family’s property in the Central Valley, raw cotton from a black-owned farm, river water from the Ohio River and palm fronds from Cameroon. For this workshop, we will collect objects from the natural world to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and our connection to the world around us.

2025 Mentors

Kimberley Acebo Arteche is an interdisciplinary artist, cultural worker, and healer working across photography, textiles, and ritual. Arteche is the co-founder of Balay Kreative, a cultural hub and artist incubator program serving Filipina/o/x artists in SOMA Pilipinas, and has served on Southern Exposure’s Curatorial Council, SOMA Pilipinas’ Arts & Culture Committee, and the Zellerbach Family Foundation Community Arts Panel. 

Trina Michelle Robinson is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the relationship between memory and migration. She studies the fragments of memory and repurposes them, examining every fracture, fold and glitch to release trauma while simultaneously uplifting the forgotten moments that should be celebrated. Her work has been shown at the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia, ICA San José, Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco Art Commission Main Gallery, New York’s Wassaic Project, and the triennial Bay Area Now 9 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Her solo exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora, was part of their Emerging Artist Program 2022-23.

Weston Teruya is a visual artist who moves between individual and collective modes of practice. His work has been exhibited at Mills College Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa; and supported by Artadia, Asian Cultural Council, and Headlands Center for the Arts. His collaborative work primarily manifests through Related Tactics, a collective of artists of color who create projects at the intersection of race and culture. Their work has been supported by Craft Research Fund, Ruth Foundation for the Arts, Kala Art Institute’s Print Public, and Montalvo Arts Center.

Christine Wong Yap is a visual artist and social practitioner who specializes in hyperlocal, participatory research projects which gather and amplify grassroots perspectives on belonging, resilience, and mental well being. Her projects combine drawing, lettering, printmaking, publishing, and textiles with community engagement, inclusive design, and public art and activations. She has developed public-facing, human-centered projects with the California College of the Arts, Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, For Freedoms, the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, Stanford University, Times Square Arts, and the Wellcome Trust. She holds a BFA and MFA in printmaking from the California College of the Arts.