About
photo by jon pham
Kelsey Boncato (b. 1993) is a Filipina American interdisciplinary artist working across painting, animation, and immersive media. Her practice draws from Philippine animistic cosmologies — particularly the figure of the babaylan, or spiritual guide — and from her ongoing Visions and Dreams sketchbooks, weaving dreams, ancestral memory, and embodied experience into material and time-based forms. Through intimate transmissions, poetic pattern, and symbolism, she explores the fluid boundaries between the subliminal and the felt, tracing the diasporic body across space and time.
Her collaborative art and sound labyrinth, FOREST (for—rest), exhibited internationally in 2019, was nominated for Best Digital Experience by Sheffield Doc|Fest and awarded Best VR Experience by VRHAM! in Hamburg. Under the moniker Kelady, she further explores voice through multi-genre songwriting and performance. Boncato holds a B.A. in Art from USC Roski School of Art and Design and is a 2026 AAPI Emerging Artist Fellow and recipient of the Discovery Scholar Prize.
Artist Statement
CV
© 2026. Kelsey Boncato. All Rights Reserved.