Chelsea Ryoko Wong – Bay Area Now 9
October 6-May 5, 2024
Chelsea Ryoko Wong is featured in the triennial exhibition Bay Area Now 9 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. Wong has spent the last sixteen years living and working in the Mission District and will present a selection of new paintings and works on paper inspired by the waterways of Northern California and the archaeology of Chinatown.
In the tri-part series California Waterways, Wong explores the trajectory of water throughout the state of California, from the Sierra Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. She explains, "At a time when water has become a precious resource, I want to highlight the ways in which we interact with it at various stages in the California landscape."
Another tri-part series Chinatown in Layers reflects the archaeological layers of San Francisco’s Chinatown, the oldest Chinatown in America. Stacked vertically, the paintings represent the intimate realities that can be found underground, at street level, and within the residential homes of this dynamic and close-knit community.
Wong (b. 1986, Seattle, WA) is a painter and muralist. She attended Parsons School of Design, New York and received her BFA in printmaking from California College of the Arts. She is the first recipient of the Hamaguchi Emerging Artists Fellowship award at Kala Art Institute, Berkeley and was a 2022 finalist for SFMOMA’s esteemed SECA Art Award. She has participated in group exhibitions at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Creativity Explored, Chinese Cultural Center, and Bolinas Museum. She has completed large-scale mural projects in San Francisco at Asana; La Cocina; and through the Facebook Artist in Residence Program. Her work has been acquired by institutional and private collections including the de Young, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento. Wong lives and works in the Mission District of San Francisco.
