When you enter 1224 Harrison Street in downtown Oakland, it feels less like a studios and more like a shared living room for creativity. Workstations line the walls, easels and art supplies are scattered throughout, and shelves hold everything from paints and brushes to odd objects and plants. In the center, couches and benches create a place to sit, talk, or share tea. Depending on the time of day, you might find artists painting, practicing music, hosting workshops, or simply welcoming friends. That is the spirit of ARTogether’s Residency Studio.

In only two years, an idea has grown into a home for immigrant and diasporic artists, a place where creativity and community meet every day. It is small, yes, but cozy, filled with tall windows that flood the room with light, and a cement wall that has become the backdrop for countless portraits and art-making photos.

What makes this space and the residency powerful is not just that artists create here. It is that they use it to build something larger than themselves and larger than the space itself. In recent months, residents have opened their doors to the public, offering free dance classes, Chinese language lessons, and art-making gatherings. Their practices spill into community practice, where teaching, learning, and healing happen side by side.

Our 2025 Artists in Residence (AiR) cohort carries this spirit forward. Their work spans painting, music, installation, performance, animation, and more, each deeply informed by questions of migration, identity, and belonging. Some trace memories of land and lineage through sculpture and material. Others create vibrant paintings that hold the tensions of diaspora. One artist explores the power of embroidery to preserve her Palestinian heritage, another brings sound into conversation with Korean tradition. Together, they remind us that immigrant and diasporic artists are creators of art, leaders, teachers, and builders of community.

One of the residents, Mame, drives all the way from the South Bay to be part of this program and shared that she has not found another space that supports immigrant artists and cares so deeply about community.

Artists here are advancing their own practice while shaping a wider ecosystem of belonging. With their mentors* they have reflected on building communities of care, writing from a place of strength, and navigating the realities of funding and survival as artists in the Bay Area.

Now they are preparing their group exhibition, o v e r / e x p o s e d, opening September 26. It will be a multimedia showcase asking pressing questions about visibility: what it means to be seen without being consumed, to reveal without surrendering. The exhibition, like the residency itself, insists that immigrant artists deserve space to create, to thrive, to question, and to transform. We invite you to join us at the opening and see for yourself what this residency makes possible.

* Mentors: Kimberley Acebo Arteche, Christine Wong Yap, Weston Teruya , Trina Michelle Robinson 

The Fragile Reality 

While this is a time to celebrate the achievements of these artists and the growth of the AiR program, we cannot ignore the fragility of its existence. Like many other arts and immigrant spaces, this program has been directly impacted by ongoing funding cuts.

We took a leap of faith in 2022 when we rented this space. We knew we would not charge the artists because the program had to remain free and accessible to all. At the time, our long-standing partnership with the City of Oakland gave us confidence. Then, suddenly, the City’s Cultural Affairs grant program ended. The final payment never came, leaving us in deficit. And this year, deeper cuts followed. Without new resources, one of the last free spaces for immigrant and diasporic artists in the East Bay could disappear. This is the reality we are currently facing. 

At ARTogether, we know the urgency to protect this residency comes not from sentiment, but from the positive impact we see that takes place here every day. Across the nation and even in the Bay Area, more and more doors are closing to the most vulnerable in our immigrant communities. The loss of this residency means the disappearance of programs, gatherings, and the safety and livelihood of many. That is exactly what is at stake.

We ask you to support this program and our community with a donation. Help us keep this vital program, resource and lifeline for the Immigrant and Refugee community open.

If you are interested in giving a transformational gift to keep this program open, contact us at info@artogether.org or make a donation here.