yuniya edi kwon (b. 1989) 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.
As a violinist, violist, and/or vocalist, yuniya has created alongside Roscoe Mitchell, Moor Mother, Sun Ra Arkestra, Meshell Ndegeocello, Mary Halvorson, Nicole Mitchell, Cory Smythe, Darius Jones, Susan Alcorn, Carla Kihlstedt, Jessika Kenney, Lesley Mok, and others. She has performed throughout the Americas and Europe, including the Kennedy Center, Big Ears Festival, Kaufman Center, Wexner Center, SESC Pompeia, Barbican Centre, Jazzfest Berlin, Festival Sons d’hivers, Festival Banlieues Bleues, moers festival, and more. Commissions include Roulette Intermedium, Harlem Stage, Monheim Triennale, Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, Bang on a Can, National Performance Network, and Colorado College Creativity & Innovation.
She was born and raised in Minnesota, on the ancestral land of the Dakhóta and Anishinaabeg.
Artist Statement
In my life, I use sound, movement, and ritual to create spaces of intense presence and transformation. In all I do, I hope to be radically present with the ongoing, transformational miracle of life, and to share generously with others its resonances, whispers, and subterranean logics. I draw from, and am nourished by, the spiritual and cultural continuums of queer trans artist communities from around the world, and particularly the extraordinary history of trans Korean shamans active during the periods of colonization, occupation, and rebellion. Through a relational practice, I summon an opening through which I might access a creative, spiritual ancestry that can include, support, and embrace me. To share this opening with others, then, is to co-create affirming, inclusive lineages and families, and reject limiting, cisheteropatriarchal ideas of bloodlines and biological ancestry.