Announcing 2026 Grant Cycle Awardees 

May 13, 2026 

The Asian Cultural Council (ACC) is proud to announce our 2026 Grant Cycle awardees. Through the exchange of artists and scholars, ACC is investing in a vision for the future: one built on mutual understanding and deep respect through the arts and culture that express our societies’ collective ideas, values, and hopes. 

These grants will enable artists, scholars, and arts professionals from Afghanistan, Mainland China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States, and Vietnam to connect with their peers in other cultures. 

New York Fellowship 
 
Over six months, a diverse cohort of artists, scholars, and arts professionals from Asia can live in the U.S. and spend time learning and exploring a new cultural landscape. This rare pause from daily life and work—shared with peers across disciplines—offers space for reflection, exploration, and meaningful exchange, free from the pressure to produce or present new work. 

  

Riki BENEDICTO, Theater Director | Theater | Philippines → United States 

Grant Summary: To investigate process-led and collaborative practices among independent, conceptual, and experimental theater-makers. Benedicto will immerse himself in artist-run spaces and collectives whose work expands authorship, reimagines performance-making, and develops new work. Through rehearsals, classes, and conversations with directors, performers, designers, and artistic leaders, he will observe how ideas, collaborative methods, and emerging concepts take form within an evolving creative relationship. Following the fellowship, Benedicto plans to contribute to a more connected and critically engaged network across the regions where he is actively working.  

Follow Riki BENEDICTO: Instagram 

 

 

 

Gargi BHARADWAJ | Theater | India → United States 

Grant Summary: To study the work of independent women theater makers in New York engaged in solo theater productions. Baradwaj will identify and engage with women solo performers, including those from the Indian diasporic community, to understand performance practices that facilitate experimental and intuitive play as well as the economics of solo work, its affective and labor dimensions, and the shifting networks through which this form circulates. In addition to these conversations, Baradwaj will observe performances, visit venues, and conduct archival research into curatorial practices and models of patronage. As a performance scholar whose work is informed by cultural policy, she hopes to articulate an alternate cross-cultural genealogy of women solo performers whose work responds to today’s ecological, financial, political and democratic crises. 

 

Yen Tzu CHANG | Visual Art | Taiwan → United States 

ACC Chen-Yung Foundation Fellowship 

Grant Summary: To explore advanced sound synthesis techniques, AI applications in sound creation, and connections between ecology and sound art. Chang’s fellowship will focus on exchanges with peer professionals, immersion in New York’s sound art scene, and fieldwork documenting urban soundscapes. She aims to meet with sound artists, curators, and art and technology institutions to better understand how New York’s artists create in such a diverse, urbanized environment, the issues they address, and how sound artists intervene in public spaces. Engaging with biologists and environmental researchers and documenting local soundscapes, Chang seeks to explore urban animal conditions and sound as ecological documentation. She hopes the fellowship will yield new perspectives for her practice, bring Taiwanese ecological concerns and sonic aesthetics into global dialogue, and foster cross-border connections. 

Follow Yen Tzu CHANG: Website | Instagram 

 

Ihot Sinlay Cihek | Theater | Taiwan → United States 

Grant Summary: To examine the dramaturgy of identity in New York’s theater ecosystem. Ihot Sinlay Cihek proposes a fellowship focused on dismantling and reimagining the dramaturgy of equitable collaboration between indigenous and settler artists within a globalized creative environment. Over the six-month fellowship, she will conduct institutional research, visit vanguard experimental venues, and engage in dialogues with playwrights, directors, and dramaturgs whose work actively navigates complex racial and ethnic politics. Ihot Sinlay Cihek hopes the fellowship will help her develop a transnational comparative framework for future decolonial theatre-making while at the same time seeding a vital, reciprocal knowledge transfer between Taiwan’s Indigenous performing arts community and New York’s vanguard theatre scene, establishing new global models for creative alliance.  

Follow Ihot Sinlay Cihek: Website | Instagram 

 

 

Abhishek GOSWAMI | Theater | India → United States 

Grant Summary: To explore how pedagogical drama informs educators’ professional development and creative learning in schools. Goswami will engage with institutions and practitioners in New York who employ drama as a transformative pedagogical tool, including Lincoln Center Education, New York University’s Program in Educational Theatre, and The New Victory Theater, as well as community-based art educators working in diverse cultural and socio-economic contexts. Through exchanges with these institutions and communities, Goswami will study how drama processes, including role play, image theatre, and ensemble building, can help teachers develop creative confidence, critical thinking, and emotional literacy. He further hopes to share insights from his own work and experience in India, where theater has been used to empower teachers and youth in multilingual, multicultural environments. 

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Saori HALA | Dance | Japan → United States Photo by Nanako Kobayashi 
ACC / Saison Foundation Fellow 

Grant Summary: To investigate the history of bodily performance in New York, the relationship between art and entertainment, and their impact on postwar Japan. Through archival research at the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts, The Kitchen, and MoMA, Hala will trace a lineage from 1960s postmodern dance to interdisciplinary practices since the 2000s. She will examine how bodily performance is valued within the contexts of art and entertainment, and reconsider the history of the American entertainment industry and its influence on postwar Asia in relation to current U.S.–Japan dynamics. She will also explore artist-led initiatives and platforms and models of cross-disciplinary cultural transmission, applying these insights to her platform for performing artists in Japan. 

Follow Saori HALA: Website | Instagram 

   

LIU Tian | Curation | China (Mainland) → United States 

Désirée & Hans Michael Jebsen Fellowship 

 Grant Summary: To research curatorial education practices as a form of social imagination and cultural mediation to rethink and reform current contemporary art curricula. Through site visits, archival study, and structured conversations with curators, educators, program directors, and artist-organizers, Liu will examine diverse approaches to curatorial education. He hopes to gain a better understanding of how curatorial studies programs in the U.S. structure their curricula, select faculty, and articulate their methodological frameworks. He also aims to expand his understanding of New York’s broader art ecology and thereby grasp the contexts in which curatorial and educational work take place. Liu hopes the fellowship will yield opportunities for future academic collaborations and continued cultural dialogue with counterparts in the U.S. after returning to China. 

Follow LIU Tian: Website 

 

Rafa LUBIGAN | Arts Administration | Philippines → United States Photo by JL Javier 

Grant Summary: To gain firsthand insight into current stage management practices through workshops, rehearsals, mentorships, and exchanges. Lubigan will explore innovative approaches to stage management, blending traditional management practices with emerging methodologies in operational design, technology integration, and sustainable production systems. He aims to deepen his professional practice, engage in meaningful knowledge exchange, and adapt and localize the methods he observes to the Philippine context, translating them into sustainable, collaborative frameworks that strengthen local stage management communities. 

Follow Rafa LUBIGAN: Website | Instagram 

  

Nakrob MOONMANAS| Visual Art | Thailand → United States 

 Grant Summary: To explore international constructions of Thai identity and the lived experiences of Thai diasporic communities through researching Chang and Eng Bunker, conjoined twins brought to the U.S. from Siam in the 18th century. Moonmanas believes the Bunker brothers reflect an early history of displacement and Siam-U.S. cross-cultural encounters and raise deep questions about memory, migration, and the formation of identity. Through archival research and interviews with the twins’ descendants, he hopes to understand how their story has been remembered, interpreted, and connected to broader narratives of Thai diasporic experiences. Meeting members of New York’s Thai community, especially arts and culture professionals, as well as scholars and artists who work on Southeast Asian history and contemporary art will further enhance his research and international networks. 

Follow Nakrob MOONMANAS: Website | Instagram 

 

Riza A ROMERO | Conservation | Philippines → United States 

Grant Summary: To benchmark art conservation degree programs in New York and the U.S. through observation, events, and dialogues. Over the course of her six-month fellowship, Romero will observe training and service delivery at the Metropolitan Museum, attend MoMA conservation events, and build ties with conservation experts, gaining and exchanging knowledge and ideas related to conservation curriculum design, pedagogy, and facilities. Her primary objective is to help develop a robust, internationally competitive art conservation program in the Philippines, addressing the critical lack of formal training in the field. 

Follow Riza A ROMERO: Website 

 

Luis Antonio SANTOS | Visual Art | Philippines → United States 

Grant Summary: To explore traditional printmaking and emerging image-making technologies while engaging with museums, artist-run spaces, and small organizations. Santos will visit print studios, archives, libraries, and institutions that support printmaking practices, such as the International Center of Photography and Printed Matter, as well as attend exhibitions, open studios, talks, and public programs that reflect New York’s diverse and evolving approaches to art-making. He aims to understand how artists sustain their practice across contexts and evolving communities and Santos hopes to return to the Philippines with clearer direction and insights to share with his community. 

Follow Luis Antonio SANTOS: Website | Instagram 

 

TAKIDO Dorita | Visual Art | Japan → United States 

 

 Grant Summary: To research interconnected environmental challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss, and practices of environmental care and coexistence in New York. Takido will conduct research through dialogues, interviews, and visits with communities that connect nature and art, including museums, community gardens, urban agriculture, bio-labs, and environmentally oriented art projects, while participating in citizen-led initiatives that pursue holistic approaches to ecology and sustainability. Through conversations with artists, researchers, local residents, and participants in educational programs, she will examine the structures of these practices and modes of access, and reflect on them in relation to the situation in Japan. 

Follow TAKIDO Dorita: Website | Instagram 

 

Otniel TASMAN | Dance | Indonesia → United States 

  

Grant Summary: To deepen his artistic and intellectual understanding through direct encounters with various practices, performances, and archives related to the body, gender, and spirituality. Tasman will explore the historicity of the body and aesthetic difference through archival research, interviews, and performance observations, focusing on the Lengger traditional dance and queer performance. Through these experiences, Tasman aims to expand his understanding of how the body carries both history and possibility and how performance can act as a site of transformation for spirituality, queerness, and aesthetics. The fellowship will provide contemplative space and critical distance necessary for Tasman to reflect on his ongoing research and to reframe his practice within a broader cross-cultural and philosophical context. 

Follow Otniel TASMAN: Website | Instagram 

 

TSAI Jia-Hong | Crafts | Taiwan → United States 

Grant Summary: To conduct research on prehistoric figurines, mother-goddess imagery, and feminist symbolism within historical and contemporary art contexts, whilst exploring the relationship between ceramic practice and experiences of personal trauma. Tsai plans to visit institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History, gathering and organizing materials through observation, sketching, and photographic documentation, in order to examine how artifacts embody both sacred and secular meanings. She will also visit art therapy-related organizations to observe how craft practices may serve as a connection between the body and emotional responses. Tsai aims to integrate these cultural exchange learnings into her future ceramic practice. 

Follow TSAI Jia-Hong: Website | Instagram 

WANG Qizheng | Dance | China (Mainland) → United States 

ACC Hong Kong Arts Circle Fellowship 

 Grant Summary: To conduct targeted research in choreography with the aim of building a framework for stage arts that responds to contemporary societal issues. Wang, who is a deputy director of the renowned Shanghai Dance Theater, will immerse himself in New York’s diverse cultural environment and expand his artistic vocabulary through visits to theaters, museums, archives, and cultural institutions, as well as by attending workshops and interdisciplinary discussions. He will connect with artists, scholars, and curators from various fields to exchange perspectives on choreography, performance, and cross-disciplinary creation, to better understand how artistic languages merge in practice. Wang hopes this experience will build an open, cross-disciplinary mindset that strengthens his creative practice and theoretical research, and that the fellowship will foster cross-cultural dialogue that contributes to the broader development of contemporary dance and stage arts. 

 

Karen YU | Music | Hong Kong SAR → United States 

Altius Fellowship 

Grant Summary: To explore New York’s ecosystem of independent artists and entities, cross-disciplinary communities, and institutions, examining how support structures and audience engagement shape creative practices in performance and sound. Yu’s research will focus on how organizations of different scales collaborate, sustain artistic production, and cultivate audiences open to experimental or unfamiliar listening. Performances, exhibitions, public programs, and informal gatherings will serve as key sites of study, while conversations with artists, curators, and programmers will offer insight into support systems and community-building approaches shaped within the dense environment of New York. Insights into these curatorial strategies and listening-focused experiences will inform her curatorial practice and efforts to develop inclusive, accessible listening spaces and approaches. 

Follow Karen YU: Website | Instagram