traci kato-kiriyama
Performer and Principal Writer of PULLproject Ensemble
and Director/Co-Founder of Tuesday Night Project
“Interconnectedness of people, of communities, of struggles, of the personal and political, of the past, present, and future—this inspires and fascinates me as much as it grounds and informs my work. Art and the process of making it is not only a profession and a practice, it has the power to build community and create change. Much of my work breathes through the interplay of performance, collaboration, experimentation, communication, and connection to self and others. Whether on place and time, on turning points, homage, death, loss, ideation, disease, love, relationship, birthing, or our bittersweet existence, the creative process gives permission and calls on us to write into the bones, and imagine backward and forward until we excavate some kind of healing, or truth, or madness, or all of the above.”
Biography
The award-winning artist, community organizer, and cultural producer traci kato-kiriyama (she/they) is a performer and principal writer of PULLproject Ensemble; director and co-founder of Tuesday Night Project (presenter of Tuesday Night Cafe, the longest-running Asian American public arts series in the country); steering committee member of Vigilant Love; and member of Nikkei Progressives and Okaeri. They have presented in hundreds of venues throughout the country as a performer, theater deviser, writer, actor, organizer, educator, and arts and culture consultant. Their writing, commentary, and work have been presented by a wide array of media from NPR to PBS, C-SPAN, Elle.com, and The Hollywood Reporter, as well as by publishers including Regent Press, Heyday Books, Bamboo Ridge Press, Chaparral Canyon Press, Tia Chucha Press, and Entropy. Their forthcoming book is being published in 2020 by Writ Large Press.
Through 20-plus years in performance, theater, and literary work, they’ve created material that has been characterized as intimate, abstract, avant-garde, and political. Through all of it, their rules have been to make sure the story/project at hand is thoroughly personal regardless of issue or platform, to expand and deepen practice and play with form and intersecting mediums that make sense for the storytelling, to be challenged, freaked out, and thrilled by the attempts, to find ways to bring in others, to find ways to bring more and more of their “selves” into each process, performance, production, publication, creative intervention, public installation, action, and collaboration; to be self-determined, and to remember all of this—art, life, community building—is one huge experiment within the brief span of a lifetime.
Photo Credits
Daren Mooko and Mike Dennis