Asia Art Archive in America is excited to announce artist Chantal Peñalosa Fong as our 2026 Artist-in-Residence. During her one year residency, Fong will engage in the research, development, and/or execution of a new creative work responding to AAAinA’s digital and physical archive and collection. 

This residency program aims to catalyze new ideas through invited artists and their engagement with the collections we hold. The Artist-in-Residence will have access to the collection and the opportunity to research the wide range of materials available in our reading room. The collection comprises over 5,000 titles about contemporary art from and of Asia and includes access to the over 82,000 digitized records of primary source material in AAAinA’s research collection. The available collections span a range of monographs, exhibition catalogs, reference books, periodicals, and audio-visual materials, in addition to digitized photographs, letters, and other ephemera. The goals of this residency is to offer a place for research and reflection while fostering collaborative exchanges with our community through individualized introductions and public programming.

Chantal Peñalosa Fong is a multidisciplinary artist based in NYC. Through video, photography, sculpture, installation, writing, and performance, her body of work uncovers stories and sites beyond authorized histories. Born in the US–Mexico border region, she inhabits conditions marked by waiting, suspension, violence, and the spectral. Drawing from archives, site visits, collaboration, and elements of the biographical, her practice desires to make the unseen tangible, transforming forgotten histories into a visual language that unsettles official narratives and illuminates the enduring presence of what has always existed at the thresholds. In recent projects, she connects genealogies forged through migration, labor, and displacement, interweaving the United States, Mexico, and China. 

Peñalosa Fong lives the geopolitical with intimacy.

She holds a B.A. in Visual Arts from the Autonomous University of Baja California in Tijuana, Mexico and the University of São Paulo in Brazil. Her recent solo exhibitions include Cuentos de Presagio / Loom Tales, Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Zapopan, Mexico (2025); Haunted, Kittredge Gallery, Tacoma, Washington (2025); Otros cuentos fantasmas, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico (2024); Ghost Stories / Cuentos de fantasmas, Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City, Mexico (2023); Atlas Western, CEINA, Santiago, Chile (2023); Another Million Moments, Centro de las Artes Nave Generadores, Monterrey, Mexico (2022); and a solo presentation at MUAC, Mexico City, Mexico (2021). In addition to numerous group exhibitions, her work has been presented at institutions including Americas Society, New York (2024); Fondazione Prada, Venice (2023); Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2021); and M HKA, Antwerp (2019). Her work has been featured in publications such as Prime: Art’s Next Generation (Phaidon, 2022), Transnational Belonging and Female Agency in the Arts (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023), and Chantal Peñalosa: A Universe On The Line (ESPAC, 2024). She was recently a participant in the Independent Study Program (ISP) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2024–2025). She is a faculty member at the School of Arts, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Tijuana, Mexico.

AAAinA’s 2026 Artist-in-Residence program is generously supported by The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Global. 

AAAinA’s general operations are funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, Ruth Foundation for the Arts, and other foundations and individuals.