8 Rising Asian American Women Artists to Watch

There was a time, not so long ago, when it was not unusual to wonder where all the Asian American artists were. This curiosity led Kathy Huang to curate a group exhibition for gallery Jeffrey Deitch, where she’s managing director. Initially, she worried that finding 30 artists would be too big a task. She was wrong. The exhibition opened in May 2022 in New York, before traveling to Los Angeles.

Huang’s interest in this area culminates this month with the publication of Wonder Women: Art of the Asian Diaspora. Many of the 40 women and nonbinary artists featured in the book—including Susan Chen, Dominique Fung, Chitra Ganesh, Sasha Gordon, and Maia Cruz Palileo—have become highly sought-after. “It’s great to see names on a gallery roster that feels more inclusive,” Huang noted, observing the recent shift in the industry.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Huang, who was then living in New York’s Chinatown, relied on social media to do her research. Now in Brooklyn, she looks to local organizations such as The Here and There Collective, a nonprofit founded in 2021 by three Asian American art collectors, to discover new talent. “It’s been a pleasure to see so many more Asian artists, and even being able to easily find Asian artists in general, practicing and on Instagram,” she said.

To celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, Huang shared a list of emerging Asian diasporic artists she’s currently most excited about. While Wonder Women focuses primarily on figurative works, she finds herself drawn to abstraction in this moment, as she feels representation doesn’t need to be limited to making art about identity. For these artists, all of whom happen to be based in New York, art mirrors their multi-faceted experiences and the nuances of their everyday lives. Reflecting on her personal journey learning about Asian American artists, Huang said: “My world has really expanded.”

B. 1991, Minneapolis. Lives and works in New York.

Known for: geometric paintings and sculptures with a metaphysical touch

“Ragini Bhow’s work explores perception and transformation through careful, intuitive processes that make the invisible feel tangible. I first discovered Ragini’s work at her Francois Ghebaly solo exhibition in New York in 2023. With Ragini’s work, I just really like the way it looks. I’ve been really interested in the Gothic. And so, I’ve been looking at artists whose work I feel like has a Gothic sensibility. Even though her works are abstract, or can be abstracted, I see them as architectural because the Gothic really did start as an architectural movement. That’s what really drew me to the work. She happens to be South Asian. It’s not really so much because I was seeking out more Asian artists. I was like, ‘Oh wow, this looks Gothic, and I want to see more.’”

B. 1990, Guangzhou, China. Lives and works in New York.

Known for: sculptures and installations synthesizing organic and artificial materials

“I saw Shuyi’s work from one of the features on The Here and There Collective’s Instagram. ​​I like Shuyi Cao’s work because it weaves together materials and references from both China and New York, creating objects that feel tied to multiple places at once. Her sculptures are an ode to nature and elements of nature, but also play into science and material and geography. Her work is related to her diasporic experience because of the different geographies and how she’s sourcing images and materials. So that’s a good example of her cultural identity being part of the work, but not the core of the work necessarily. Shuyi currently has a show up at Gathering in London.”

“When I first found out about Kyung-Me’s work, she had this series of drawings called ‘Bad Korean.’ She made a book that I ordered years ago. It was figurative works about her being a bad Korean, which I love. She has since pivoted from that.

“Kyung-Me’s work layers objects and styles from different cultures—like in The Dollhouse (2023), which was exhibited at Kiang Malingue—to create dense spaces that feel both familiar and unsettling. They feel very haunting. Some of them have elements of Asian interiors. Maybe in a way, I’m not realizing but I’m subconsciously drawn to this work because architecture is a big part of Asian arts in general.”

B. 1985, Shanghai. Lives and works in New York.

Known for: sculptural wall works incorporating Chinese herbs and plants

“Wen Liu’s work incorporates materials like Chinese medicine, resin, clay, and herbs to create sculptures that are both bodily and architectural. One, for example, is about herbal medicine, and Western versus Asian medicines—I feel like there’s always this tension between those two. In Wen’s case, it’s very similar in the sense that her cultural identity is part of her work, but it’s not so obvious. You can still appreciate the work for its formal qualities, for her technical skill. Maybe you have a different interpretation from Wen’s interpretation or her purpose or intent with the work. I think when anybody looks at first, it looks like an abstract sculpture, and you can appreciate it just as that, too. But when you dig deeper, there are these personal undertones to the work. So I like those layers. Wen just opened a show called ‘Antidote’ at Gaa Gallery in New York.”

B. 1991, Yueyang, China. Lives and works in New York and Stockholm.

Known for: corporeal installations featuring skin-like surfaces

“I like Anna Ting Möller’s work because they use materials like fermented kombucha leather, silk, and soil to build fragile yet resilient structures that reflect on motherhood, care, and the shaping of identity through physical processes. When I went to visit them, they had a little lab in their studio. I was really drawn by the material and process. It’s really interesting because of how they’re making the work. The way you make kombucha, in the same way that you make sourdough bread, there’s the mother. Anna Ting was adopted, and their work is about not knowing who their parents are. In the same way that diaspora kids feel separated from their mother country or mother culture, I think that probably adopted kids experience that even more so because they don’t have their parents to talk to them about where their grandparents came from. That’s what informed their interest in that material and process.

“I first saw Anna Ting Möller’s work at the Columbia MFA thesis show a couple of years ago. They later took part in The Here and There Collective studio residency. Anna Ting’s work is currently on view in a group show called ‘Dirty & Disorderly: Contemporary Artists on Disgust’ at MASS MoCA.”

B. 1999, New Jersey. Lives and works in New York.

Known for: intricate hand-woven tapestries and freeform textiles

“Jacqueline Qiu’s work incorporates textile techniques and natural materials to blend Eastern and Western traditions, turning personal reflections into tactile, woven landscapes. Jacqueline completed the Ós Residency at the Icelandic Textile Center, where she did this project, ‘Lulling.’ It’s definitely related to her interest in landscapes and nature.

“She’s currently in The Here and There residency and just had an open studio. She was telling me how when she’s on the loom, she has a rough idea of what she wants to do, but she’s kind of always figuring it out as she goes. I’m just really intrigued by the materiality of the work because I do see a lot of textile works, but there’s something about this that feels really painterly to me. I like her direction, and I’m really interested to see what else she does.”

B. 1995, Chengdu, China. Lives and works in New York.

Known for: playful sculptural objects remixing pop culture motifs

“Huidi uses cartoon-like forms and industrial materials to explore how labor, nostalgia, and consumer fantasy collide in both personal memory and capitalist systems. There’s definitely a sense of humor embedded in her work, and there’s almost this kind of Disneyfication that she is talking about. There’s something really intriguing about the work, where you take an element from something that’s very well-known and completely strip it of its context. I’m really drawn to it in that way, because she’s able to make work that is really sculpturally, formally interesting. And then it’s strange, but you feel like you’ve seen it before, you know what it is. It’s like this feeling of nostalgia. So I think I’m really drawn to the feeling that I get when I see her work.

“Huidi most recently showed work at Independent 2025 in New York with YveYANG Gallery.”

B. 1994, Brampton, Canada. Lives and works in New York.

Known for: abstract, rhythmic paintings with pulsing color and organic forms