yuniya edi kwon
About this Artist
yuniya edi kwon is a violinist, vocalist, and interdisciplinary performance maker based in Lenapehoking, or New York City. Her practice connects composition, improvisation, movement, and ceremony to explore transformation & transgression, ritual practice as a tool to queer ancestral lineage, and the use of mythology to connect, obscure, and reveal.
As a composer-performer and improviser, she is inspired by Korean folk timbres & inflections, textures & movement from natural environments, and American experimentalism as shaped by the AACM. Her work as a choreographer and movement artist embodies an expressive release and reclamation of colonialism’s spiritual imprints, connecting to both Japanese Butoh and a lineage of queer trans practitioners of Korean shamanic ritual.
She is a 2025 Creative Capital Awardee, 2023-25 Arts Fellow at Princeton University, 2024 Civitella Ranieri Fellow, 2023 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Robert Rauschenberg Awardee in Music/Sound, 2016 United States Artists Ford Fellow, Van Lier Fellow & Resident Artist at Roulette Intermedium, Johnson Fellow at Americans for the Arts, Andrew W. Mellon Artist-in-Residence at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, Hermitage Fellow, and a recipient of the National Performance Network Creation Fund Award. Her work has been presented by Dia Beacon, Performa Biennial, New York Live Arts, Under The Radar Festival, National Sawdust, Roulette Intermedium, On The Boards, Asia Society, Harlem Stage, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Monheim Triennale, and others.
She was described as “absolutely stunning” (Wire Magazine), “strange and brilliantly captivating” (Jazz Pages Germany), and “a revelation ... with her virtuoso violin and equally virtuoso voice” (Jazz Magazine, Paris), and was listed as one of the Washington Post’s “22 for ‘22: Composers and performers to watch this year.”
In addition to an evolving, interdisciplinary solo practice, yuniya collaborates with artists of diverse disciplines, including The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Senga Nengudi, Du Yun, Holland Andrews, Tomeka Reid, Degenerate Art Ensemble, Kenneth Tam, isabel crespo pardo, and International Contemporary Ensemble. In 2023, she founded SUN HAN GUILD, a sound and performance collective with composer-improvisers Laura Cocks, Jessie Cox, DoYeon Kim, and Lester St. Louis.