Our Story

Cheng-Lan Foundation was founded on the belief that supporting artists of the global majority is essential to shaping a more expansive and equitable cultural landscape. Established as a socially sustainable, independently funded initiative, the foundation accompanies artists – not only in moments of recognition, but throughout the quieter, ongoing rhythms of making.

Conversations around inclusion and cultural equity have long shaped the arts, though only more recently have historically overlooked artists and communities begun to receive wider institutional attention. While welcome, this shift also underscores the need for support that is consistent, thoughtful, and enduring. Cheng-Lan Foundation responds by offering a steady, care-led approach – one rooted in dialogue, trust, and long-term commitment.

The foundation is named in honour of Wang Cheng-Lan 王承蘭 (1950–2013), a remarkable woman whose life and spirit remain a guiding force in all that we do. Inspired by her memory, the foundation carries forward a legacy of generosity, resilience, and grace.

In Chinese, Cheng 承 means to bear, to support, to inherit, to continue – an active gesture of responsibility and care. From this, we understand support not as maintenance, but as a way of upholding what matters:

To support memory.
To support quiet forms of knowledge.
To support care.
To support what comes next.

The character also recalls the phrase chéng xiān qǐ hòu 承先啓後, meaning to inherit from those who came before and to open the way for those who follow. Lan 蘭, the orchid, signifies grace, endurance, and integrity.

Officially established in 2024, the foundation builds on an earlier scholarship programme launched in 2019 at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Today, Cheng-Lan Foundation works independently to support artists through residencies, exhibitions, and commissioning – adapting with care, continuity, and openness to new forms of collaboration.

Our Focus

At Cheng-Lan Foundation, we use the term global majority less as a demographic label than as a political and ethical orientation. It signals a shift away from deficit-based terms such as “minorities” or “non-Western” – words that reproduce colonial hierarchies or impose arbitrary geographic divides – and towards a framing that is more accurate, relational, and affirming. Global majority speaks to solidarity, not marginality; to plurality, not periphery.

For us, working with artists of the global majority means engaging with practices shaped by migration, memory, kinship, displacement, and cultural continuity. It also means recognising the vast diversity encompassed by this term – across geographies, languages, lived experiences, and forms of making.

We also collaborate with artists whose lives and practices are embedded within Western contexts, yet whose perspectives are informed by diasporic inheritance, cultural hybridity, or intergenerational knowledge. Rather than applying fixed labels, we remain open to the complexity of lived experience – attentive to what is expressed, remembered, or imagined through the work itself.

This framing shapes not only who we work with, but how we work: rhizomatically – branching, interconnected, non-hierarchical. We prioritise sustained relationships over quick outcomes, allowing each initiative to emerge from genuine connection and shared purpose. Guided by a living curatorial charter, our thematic priorities unfold in two-year cycles, shaping collaboration, programming, and support. In this way, we ground our ethos in multiplicity: attuned to the layered, entangled histories we carry, and to the shared futures we seek to nurture.