yuniya edi kwon

yuniya edi kwon © Sabrina Santiago

yuniya edi kwon (aka eddy kwon, * Minnesota) is a violinist, vocalist, poet, and interdisciplinary performance artist living in New York City. In her practice she connects composition, improvisation, movement, and ceremony to explore transformation and transgression. Both ritual and mythological practices serve her as a means of revealing or obscuring genealogies.

Her work is inspired by Korean folk timbres and modulations, movements in natural space and American experimentalism, which was influenced by the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a Chicago-based musicians’ association.
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.

kwon has collaborated and performed with artists and ensembles of diverse disciplines, including The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Senga Nengudi, Du Yun, Tomeka Reid, Holland Andrews, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Kenneth Tam, Isabel Crespo Pardo, Moor Mother and the Degenerate Art Ensemble. In 2023, she founded SUN HAN GUILD, a sound and performance collective with composers and improvisers Laura Cocks, Jessie Cox, DoYeon Kim, and Lester St. Louis.

She is a lecturer and Arts Fellow at Princeton University, Johnson Fellow at Americans for the Arts, United States Artists Ford Fellow, Civitella Ranieri Fellow, and a recipient of the Robert Rauschenberg Award for Music/Sound from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

She has performed throughout the Americas and Europe as a violinist, violist, and/or vocalist with Roscoe Mitchell, Moor Mother, Mary Halvorson, Nicole Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, Cory Smythe, Susan Alcorn, Carla Kihlstedt, Jessika Kenney, Lesley Mok and others.

yuniya edi kwon:
“In my life, I use sound 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. (…)”

Anushka Chkheidze

Anushka Chkheidze (* Kharagauli, Georgia) is based in Utrecht and grew up in the small village of Kharagauli, where she began singing in a choir at the age of 11. She herself describes the time she spent there as magical and believes that her music is strongly influenced by those childhood years. This also led her to create the poetic sound installation “Lost Lullaby” for the orphaned garden of a day-care centre, which she created as part of The Sound, the sound art exhibition of the Monheim Triennale in the summer of 2023.

Brìghde Chaimbeul

Brìghde Chaimbeul (* Isle of Skye) is a leading purveyor of experimental Celtic music and of the Scottish smallpipes. She is based in Northern Scotland and has developed her own unique way of playing the instrument. The intimacy with which she is enveloped by the continuous, dronelike double tones during her play, as well as the physical experience of a whole world of sound and vibration, are important characteristics.

Darius Jones

Darius Jones (* Norfolk, Virginia) is an alto saxophon player, composer and teacher. He lives in Brooklyn, NY. As a composer and musician he works in the fields of electroacoustic, experimental, chamber and jazz music, as well as in modern dance and multimedia contexts. As a critically acclaimed saxophonist and composer, he has a distinctive voice embracing individuality and innovation in the tradition of Black Music.