Emily Cheng received a BFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design and attended the New York Studio School for three years. Her solo shows in New York include The Bronx Museum, Plum Blossom Gallery, Winston Wachter Fine Art, Bravin Post Lee Gallery, David Beiztel Gallery, and Lang and O'Hara Gallery. Emily has also had solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei); Zane Bennett Gallery in Santa Fe; Hanart Gallery in Hong Kong; Louis Vuitton, Kowloon, Hong Kong; Metropolitan Museum of Manila; and the Ayala Museum in Manila, Philippines; Byron Cohen Gallery in Kansas City; The Cincinatti Center of Contemporary Art; Schmidt Dean Gallery in Philadelphia; and Timezone 8 in Beijing and Shanghai.

Emily Cheng has been the recipient of several awards including the New York Foundation of the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, Pollock Krasner Award and a Yaddo Fellowship. In 2007,Timezone 8 published; Emily Cheng, Chasing Clouds, A decade of studies, a compendium of studies made over the last ten years with essays by Johnson Chang and Kevin Powers.