performing artist-in-residence program
RESIDENCY DESCRIPTION
The Museum of Chinese in America’s Performing-Artist-in-Residence (PAIR) Program will invite a cohort of 3 performing artists to individually develop, create and present ONE theme-based new project, by utilizing the resources and collections at MOCA. Throughout the residency, artists will be invited to participate in artist-led workshops and give a work-in-progress presentation to the public.
PERFORMING-ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM OBJECTIVES
Provide space and support for performing artists to generate a new work
Create space for organic artistic sharing and collaboration
Incubate discourse and community engagement around new ideas and artistic expression
Encourage artists to take creative risks, while nurturing a safe space for constructive feedback
Celebrate diversity in artistic expression
THEME
Implied Selves 身之所示
How do we come to understand ourselves, and how do we choose to express who we are?
The ways we present ourselves are shaped by family, culture, community, history, and the social conditions of our time. Through clothing, gesture, language, hairstyle, performance, and ritual, we communicate aspects of our identities to the world. Yet these forms of expression are never static. We inherit expectations, question them, adapt them, and sometimes reject them altogether.
Throughout history, Asian and Asian American communities have continuously negotiated the boundaries of identity and belonging through acts of self-presentation. Early Chinese immigrants cut their queues as a visible marker of political and cultural transformation. Anna May Wong challenged the racialized and exoticized expectations imposed upon Asian women. Physician Margaret Chung and filmmaker Esther Eng adopted masculine styles of dress that complicated prevailing notions of gender and sexuality. Tseng Kwong Chi’s wore the Zhongshan suit to heighten his visibility while simultaneously exposing and satirizing the ways Asian bodies were exoticized and perceived as foreign. Across generations, individuals have used appearance, gesture, and performance to assimilate, resist, survive, and imagine new possibilities for themselves.
These histories invite us to ask: What visible and invisible elements shape our sense of self? How have previous generations embraced, challenged, or transformed the identities imposed upon them? How do race, gender, sexuality, class, migration, and culture intersect in the ways we express ourselves?
This theme invites artists to investigate the broad spectrum of gender expression and self-presentation across time. How have ideas of masculinity, femininity, and gender nonconformity evolved within Asian American communities? What can we learn from historical examples of conformity, resistance, and transformation? And what new possibilities for selfhood might emerge in the future?
MOCA’s Performing Artist-in-Residence (PAIR) program encourages artists to engage deeply with our archives and collections as living materials. Through research and creative inquiry, we ask: How do these lived experiences continue to shape who we are today? And how might they guide the futures we are moving toward?
RESIDENCY DATES
October 12th, 2026 – March 12th, 2027
PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS
Selected artists are required to create a new project at MOCA during the agreed upon residency timeframe. The new project does not have to be fully developed at the end of the residency.
Selected artists are required to participate in the workshops and to lead a workshop session on the subject of their choice. This workshop can either be for the cohort or open to the public. Workshops will take place during the week of November 16th, 2026. All resident artists are required to attend.
Selected artists are required to meet at least once per month for a check-in session with the director of performance, storytelling & community during residency.
Selected artists are required to present their work-in-progress showing internally for the cohort and MOCA staff during the week of February 15th, 2027, as part of a peer review process. A public presentation of the project will take place at the conclusion of the residency during the week of March 8th, 2027. A talkback session will be scheduled following the presentation.