Denise Uyehara

I am an interdisciplinary
performance artist, writer & director investigating memory, time travel, crisis, and identity. I invite you to revisit and reshape the notions of who we are.

Works anchor

Shooting Columbus (2017)

"What if settlers never arrived?” A collaboration by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists.

Radical Time Travel

Lecture-performance sharing insights into collaboration, culture and identity.

Dreams/Sueños (2014)

Illuminating the lives of undocumented women living in the shadow of police militarization in South Tucson.

The Senkotsu (Mis)translation Project (2006)

A cycle of games exploring life, death and rebirth and history of Okinawa, Japan and the U.S. military.

Archipelago (2012)

A remix of ancient Okinawan stories and Batuc, a village in the Yaqui River Valley which was flooded by the Mexican government.

Duets with James Luna (2012 & 2017)

What makes an "authentic" indigenous person: DNA testing, ancestral teachings, or a imagined future?

Big Head (2001-2003)

Juxtaposes the U.S. treatment of Japanese American during WWII, and Muslim Americans, Arab Americans, and South Asian Americans now.

Maps of City & Body (2000)

A Chicana biker girl and her Jewish American mother, Lost and Found objects, longing, and the Finnish Tango.

Sacred Naked Nature Girls (1995-1997)

Akilah Oliver, Bella Hui, Laura Meyers, Danielle Brazelle, Denise Uyehara.

Hello (Sex) Kitty: Mad Asian Bitch On Wheels (1995)

Ethnic fetish, love and respect among the genders, queerness and the Mad Kabuki Woman.

Lost & Found

Lost objects bearing messages scattered throughout Helsinki.

Headless Turtleneck Relatives (1993)

The tale of family and a grandmother's suicide.

Other works

contact.