Arquetopia Foundation & International Artist Residency
Now in its 17th year, Arquetopia Foundation is a multiple award-winning nonprofit arts and academic foundation with a social scope that is internationally established on two continents. Our mission emphasizes critical thinking, a commitment to reciprocity, and a sense of ethics at the core of all artistic practices. Our personalized, professional International Artist-in-Residence Programs are among the largest and most reputable worldwide, with a model in constant flux, offering a wide range of distinct learning opportunities. All of our multinational artist residency programs are autonomous, unique, research based, and founded on social creativity, thus, providing an array of content anchored in local knowledge, critical academic perspectives, and a solid structure of collaborations with renowned experts, and notable artists. Our residency sites are located in three distinct artistic regions selected for their historical importance, influence and artistic contribution to the world: Puebla and Oaxaca both in southern Mexico, and Cusco in Peru.
Our Website Is Evolving!
Arquetopia’s website is under reconstruction. Bear with us!
Missed the February 15 Deadline for 2026 & 2027?
E-mail us at info@arquetopia.org
for program info, application materials, and an extension
including Day of the Dead Oaxaca 2026 & NEW Short-Term Programs
Our Residency Programs
Our Resident Artists & Writers
Our 3 Residency Spaces
About Arquetopia Foundation
Our programs have become an international reference for sustainability in the arts and a model for many residencies around the world, emphasizing research and thinking processes. Since its founding, Arquetopia Foundation has raised the bar worldwide in the residency field, by putting the value of reciprocity at the forefront of every relationship with the environment, our residents and staff, as well as everyone connected to our programs. We acknowledge the problematic ties of artist residencies to colonization and imperialism, the extractive practices of tourism and the problematic tradition of the “Grand Tour”; thus the need for critical perspectives and high standards to approach art making as an ethical practice. Our methodology is unique and inspired by the works of Emmanuel Levinas, Knud Logstrup, and Audre Lorde, in the field of ethics, we continuously challenge the narratives of “artistic mobility” and “cultural exchanges” and rather approach international encounters as opportunities in time and space to provoke change in the world.
Arquetopia was officially established as an autonomous and registered Mexican nonprofit foundation in 2009, with a solid International Board of Directors and Advisors comprised of renowned scholars, artists, entrepreneurs, and supportive community members committed to social transformation. We are proud to have established through our multiple residency programs a generous and culturally diverse space by hosting every year artists, scholars, and researchers from the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. Our experience has been enriched by the multiplicity of perspectives of more than 1,200 of our resident artists and writers who have come from all regions of the world and more than 110 countries.
Arquetopia is distinguished worldwide for its array of unique residency programs with substantial mentoring, research-based and academic content customized to each resident. Our residency spaces function exclusively for productive art professionals, writers, academics, and researchers and include comprehensive, mentored and informative programs; a network of premier collaborative workspaces, institutions, and studios; and individualized project support.
Founded by Mexican visual artist and curator Francisco Guevara and north American classical musician Chris Davis, our small nonprofit arts foundation was born in the vibrant, majestic city of Puebla, Mexico in 2009. Having initially functioned as an educational art center for inner-city youth, Arquetopia soon expanded its focus to offer international artist residency programs in under a year and then opened its second professional residency space in the historic city of Oaxaca, Mexico in 2011. Arquetopia has since grown to offer the premier artist residency programs of Mexico and Latin America, with extensive collaborative networks in central and southern Mexico and Peru, with Arquetopia’s third professional residency space having launched in spectacular Cusco, Peru in early 2018. We are very honored that many of our Artists-in-Residence have returned for residencies at Arquetopia multiple times.
Arquetopia Foundation is an entirely independent, self-sustaining, officially registered Mexican and Peruvian nonprofit organization of artist-run professional spaces that receives zero external funding. Arquetopia is strictly unaffiliated with any political, religious, war industrial or weapon-building entities.