Michael Arcega

Michael Arcega was born in 1973 in
Manila, the Phillipines.  He received his
BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, California; and his
MFA from Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. He currently resides and
works in San Francisco, California.

Arcega is an interdisciplinary artist
working primarily in sculpture and installation. Though visual, his art
revolves largely around language. Directly informed by Historic events,
material significance, and the format of jokes, his subject matter deals with
sociopolitical circumstances where power relations are unbalanced.

His work has been exhibited at numerous
venues including: the deYoung Museum, San Francisco, California; Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts, San Francisco, California; Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History,
Santa Cruz, California; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California; San Jose
Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, California; Museum of Contemporary
Art, San Diego, California; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach,
California; Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii; Honolulu Academy of Arts,
Honolulu, Hawaii; Blaffer Gallery, Houston, Texas; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,
Texas; Cue Arts Foundation, New York, New York; and the Asia Society in New
York.

Arcega is a recipient of an Art Council grant (Artadia), Joan Mitchell MFA
Award, Murphy Cadogan Fine Arts Fellowship, and Headlands Center for the Arts
MFA Fellowship. He has been an Artist in Residence at the 18th Street Art
Center, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Fountainhead Residency, the Artadia
Residency at the ISCP, and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art and at Al
Riwak Art Space in Bahrain. He was awarded a 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine
Arts. 

He
is currently in residence at Recology in San Francisco, California.  For the Recology Residency, Arcega will
explore the cultural residue of the Nacirema people of North America. Applying
strategies of the late anthropologist, Horace Miner, Arcega will attempt to
better understand these people’s lives and their daily practices.