About



photo by jon pham
Kelsey Boncato is a Filipina American artist and animator based in Los Angeles. Working across drawing, painting, animation, and sculpture, she transmutes dreams, ancestral memory, and altered states of consciousness into visual language. Her practice explores phenomenological relationships of the diasporic body across space and time. 

She envisions organic realms that weave vulnerability and embodiment, elucidating the boundaries between the subconscious, memory and emotion. Drawing from Philippine cosmologies of the babaylan (seer, guide, healer) and animism, Boncato expands post-colonial frameworks by exalting the liminal dream space as an open yet intentional container –one that holds intimate transmissions and propagates possibilities. These possibilities are grounded in both resilience and mystique, as she traces visual-poetic patterns often framing in parallel realities.

Through materiality and fragmented narrative, her work questions the control and resistance of nature while inviting reflection and regeneration through surrender. Under the moniker Kelady, she further explores voice through multi-genre songwriting and performance. Boncato is a recipient of the Discovery Scholar Prize and holds a B.A. in Art with an emphasis in Intermedia from the USC Roski School of Art and Design.



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