Art

Chelsea Ryoko Wong is a painter and muralist known for vibrant, joyful celebrations of community, ritual, and seasonality. Inspired by Northern California and international travels, the scenes in Wong’s paintings are infused with fantasy, humor, and imagination. Translating her printmaking background to the realm of painting, Wong’s paintings are composed through a meticulous layering of form and figure. Wong (b. 1986, Seattle, WA) 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 recent group exhibitions at the de Young, San Francisco; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; Creativity Explored, San Francisco, CA; Chinese Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA; and Bolinas Museum, CA. She has completed large-scale mural projects in San Francisco at Asana; La Cocina; Facebook Artist in Residence Program; and the Asian Art Museum. She was awarded the Harker Fund Residency in 2024 and will present a solo exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California in February 2025. Her work has been acquired by institutional and private collections including the de Young, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA, and Bolinas Museum, CA. Wong lives and works in the Mission District of San Francisco.