The Kenneth Rainin Foundation is proud to announce the 2025 recipients of The Rainin Arts Fellowship, an annual program honoring visionary Bay Area artists in Dance, Film, Public Space, and Theater. Marking its fifth anniversary, the Fellowship provides holistic support to help build a more equitable arts ecosystem. The Fellowship awards four artists with 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.

Launched in 2021 and administered by United States Artists, The Rainin Arts Fellowship recognizes artists who push creative boundaries, anchor local communities, and advance the arts field. The 2025 Fellows form an intergenerational cohort deeply rooted in the Bay Area, whose dedication and visionary artistic practices have shaped and strengthened the region’s cultural fabric.

As anchor artists, The Rainin Arts Fellows draw strength from the region's cultural history, while inspiring future generations of artists. Their work reflects personal and collective histories of migration, pride, belonging, and resistance — stories that reverberate within their communities and in cities around the country.

The 2025 Rainin Arts Fellows are:

• Vanessa Sanchez (Dance) 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 UC Santa Cruz and is currently an artist-in-residence at Brava! for Women in the Arts.

• Kyle Casey Chu (Film) — aka Panda Dulce — is a fourth-generation San Franciscan filmmaker and writer whose work uplifts displaced San Franciscans and Queer and 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 (Public Space) 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, city-wide 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). Her work has been presented at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Mills College Art Museum, and Southern Exposure in the San Francisco Bay Area; Wassaic Project x NY Council of the Arts in New York; Film Independent in Los Angeles; Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha; and on NPR, among other institutions. Chan is the founder of Dear America, a guerrilla public art project that projects the artworks of Asian American and Pacific Islander artists onto highrise buildings in urban areas in response to anti-Asian racism. Her independent film Plymouth Station will premiere in 2025. Chan is also 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 twenty-five years and serves as a board member at Southern Exposure in San Francisco. Born in Virginia, Chan lives in Richmond, California.

• Brenda Wong Aoki (Theater) 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 a hundred 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.

“The Bay Area has long been an anchor for many artists, fostering creativity and growth. The goal of The Rainin Arts Fellowship is to celebrate those who embody this spirit, who push boundaries and are consistently deepening their craft,” said Sarah Williams, Arts Program Officer, Kenneth Rainin Foundation. “We’re thrilled to award this year’s cohort of Rainin Arts Fellows to four visionary artists whose work reflects the Kenneth Rainin Foundation’s commitment to sustaining and stewarding the Bay Area’s cultural legacy. Each fellow brings a distinct perspective to their discipline, not only contributing to the Bay Area’s artistic community, but also shaping its future.”

This year’s Fellows were nominated by Bay Area artists and cultural leaders and selected through a two-part review process with the help of national reviewers and a panel of four local jurors. The national reviewers were Jen Krava (Forecast Public Art), Meida McNeal (Honey Pot Performance), Rachell Morillo (Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia), Eugene Sun Park (Full Spectrum Features), Maya S. Cade (Black Film Archive), Robert Ndondo-Lay (FilmNorth), David King (Apollo Theater), Murielle Borst-Tarrant (Safe Harbors NYC), Sara Zatz (Ping Chong & Company), Kim Chan (Jacob’s Pillow), Peter-Rockford Espiritu (Tau Dance Theater), and Seta Morton (Danspace Project). The Bay Area jurors were Aliah Najmabadi (Alliance for California Traditional Arts), David Mendizábal (Berkeley Repertory Theatre), Joan Osato (Youth Speaks), and Manijeh Fata (Film SF | San Francisco Film Commission). This year’s Fellowship class reflects the Foundation’s dedication to mentorship, accessibility, and the sustainability of the Bay Area arts community by fostering intergenerational exchange, culturally rooted practices, and deep collaboration with local artists and institutions.

By supporting artists who are shaping the future of their fields, the Fellowship reinforces its commitment to sustaining the Bay Area’s legacy of boundary-pushing artistry and cultivating lasting, locally rooted artistic practices. Through this investment, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation continues its mission to uplift creative voices, ensuring the Bay Area remains a vibrant center for artistic innovation and storytelling.