Michael 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. As a naturalized American, there is a geographic dimension to Arcega’s investigation of cultural markers. These markers are embedded in objects, food, architecture, visual lexicons, and vernacular languages. This malleability results in wordplay and jokes that transform words. His practice draws from the sensibility of both an insider and an outsider.

Michael Arcega was born in Manila, Philippines, and migrated to the Los Angeles area at ten years of age. He relocated to San Francisco to attend the San Francisco Art Institute where he received a BFA and later received an MFA from Stanford University. He lives and works in San Francisco, California. His work has been exhibited at the deYoung Museum; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; the Berkeley Art Museum; the Museum of Craft and Folk Art; the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Orange County Museum of Art; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; Honolulu Academy of Arts; The Blaffer Gallery, Houston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Cue Arts Foundation, and the Asia Society, New York.