2025 Rainin Arts Fellows

In April 2025, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation announced the recipients of The Rainin Arts Fellowship, an annual program honoring visionary artists and collaboratives for their significant contributions to the Bay Area’s cultural ecosystems.

Marking its fifth anniversary, the Fellowship provides holistic support to help build a more equitable arts ecosystem. Administered by United States Artists, the Fellowship awards four artists working across dance, film, public space and theater. Fellows receive unrestricted grants of $100,000 along with access to tailored resources, such as financial planning, marketing support and legal services that address each Fellow’s specific needs and goals.

The work of the 2025 Rainin Arts Fellows reflects personal and collective histories of migration, pride, belonging and resistance—stories that reverberate within their communities and in cities around the country. These artists are pushing the boundaries of creative expression, anchoring local communities and advancing the field.

Vanessa Sanchez is a Chicana dancer, choreographer and educator dedicated to community arts and traditional dance forms that amplify the voices and experiences of Latina, Chicana and Indigenous womxn and youth. Based in San Francisco, she is the Founder and Executive Artistic Director of La Mezcla, a womxn-of-color-led rhythmic dance company that explores historical narratives and social justice through tap dance, Son Jarocho and Afro-Caribbean rhythms. A 2019 Dance/USA Artist Fellow, Sanchez is committed to increasing access to high-quality arts education and performance opportunities while mentoring emerging artists and youth of color in the Bay Area. From 2020 to 2023, she was a dance lecturer at University of California, Santa Cruz and is currently an artist-in-residence at Brava! For Women in the Arts.

Kyle Casey Chu—aka Panda Dulce—is a fourth-generation San Franciscan filmmaker and writer whose work uplifts displaced San Franciscans and Queer & Trans People of Color. Chu is currently an SFFILM FilmHouse resident and is in script development for her debut surrealist drama narrative feature After What Happened at the Library. Her short film about the Rice Rockettes, San Francisco’s all Asian American and Pacific Islander drag family, will debut at NewFest Pride 2025. In addition to performing with the Rice Rockettes, who have raised over $25,000 for local causes, she is also a co-founder of Drag Story Hour. Her debut novel, The Queen Bees of Tybee County (HarperCollins, 2025), was recently optioned for a United Kingdom television series, and her picture book on San Francisco drag legend José Sarria will be released in 2026 (Abrams).

Christy Chan is a visual artist, filmmaker and community organizer. Using a combination of video, installation, performance, object-design, community engagement and public art interventions, Chan’s public space projects are often participatory, citywide platforms that aim to draw citizens from under-represented communities together to speak their truths. Past projects include Fainting Couch (2022), Dear America (2021), Everybody Eats Lunch (2019), Inside Out (2019) and I Still Live Here (2017). Chan is the founder of Dear America, a guerrilla public art project that projects the artworks of Asian American and Pacific Islander artists onto high-rise buildings in urban areas in response to anti-Asian racism. Her independent film Plymouth Station will premiere in 2025. Chan’s work has been presented locally and nationally and she is the recipient of numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Capital Award, California Arts Council Fellowship, Fleishhacker Award and others. She has been active in the Bay Area arts and film community for 25 years and serves as a board member at Southern Exposure in San Francisco. Born in Virginia, Chan lives in Richmond, California.

Brenda Wong Aoki is an internationally recognized storyteller, playwright, producer, director and performer based in San Francisco. Her interdisciplinary practice spans theater, symphony, contemporary dance, world music, taiko, jazz ensemble, film and interactive museum installation. Her work draws from her training in traditional Japanese theater forms of Noh and Kyogen, her lived experience and her family’s 127-year history in San Francisco. Aoki was also the first nationally recognized Asian Pacific storyteller in the US, and her works are archived in the American Folklife Collection at the Library of Congress. In 1997, she co-founded First Voice, one of only two organizations in the US dedicated to presenting and producing intercultural performance works. She has been an artist-in-residence at over 100 universities worldwide and was a University of California Regents Scholar. She taught one of the first Asian American Women’s Courses at San Francisco State University and is a founding faculty member of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University.

Dance

• Kim Chan, Jacob’s Pillow
• Peter-Rockford Espiritu, Tau Dance Theater
• Seta Morton, Danspace Project

Film

• Eugene Sun Park, Full Spectrum Features
• Maya S. Cade, Black Film Archive
• Robert Ndondo-Lay, FilmNorth

Public Space

• Jen Krava, Forecast Public Art
• Meida McNeal, Honey Pot Performance
• Rachell Morillo, Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia

Theater

• David King, Apollo Theater
• Murielle Borst-Tarrant, Safe Harbors NYC
• Sara Zatz, Ping Chong & Company

Aliah Najmabadi, Alliance for California Traditional Arts

David Mendizábal, Berkeley Repertory Theatre

Joan Osato, Youth Speaks

Manijeh Fata, Film SF | San Francisco Film Commission