Biography

Denise Uyehara is an interdisciplinary performance artist/writer/playwright whose work has been presented across the United States (the Walker Art Center, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Highways Performance Space), and internationally (the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, the Kiasma Museum in Helsinki, Dokkyo Performance Studies Conference and the Morishita Studio in Tokyo, the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, Women in View Festival in Vancouver). She was a founding member of the Sacred Naked Nature Girls. Her most recent work, "Big Head", links the U.S. government's incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II with treatment of those perceived as "the enemy" now, including Arab Americans, Muslims, and South Asian Americans. 

The recipient of numerous awards, Uyehara recently received a fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council, a California Civil Liberties Public Education Program grant, and was a Poets & Writers 'Writer on Site' at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Beyond Baroque Literary Center.  She is a member of the California Arts Council Touring Roster. (see listing below)

Uyehara teaches workshops in the community, and has taught performance for the Dept. of World Arts & Cultures at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and for the Depts. of Asian American Studies and Studio Arts at the University of California, Irvine (UCI).

Education: BA in Comparative Literature (UCI) and an MFA from the Dept. of World Arts & Cultures (UCLA).

Publications: Maps of City & Body: Shedding Light on the Performance and Process of Denise Uyehara (Kaya Press, 2004).  Her work also appears in O Solo Homo, Asian American Drama, Getting Your Solo Act Together, and The Asian Pacific American Journal, and as part of Meiling Cheng’s In Other Los Angeleses: Multicentric Performance Art.