iris yirei hu

iris yirei hu (b. Los Angeles, CA) is a journey-based artist who expresses her lived and dreamt experiences through paintings, textiles, installations, intercultural collaborations, writing, and public art. She often works across territories and peoples, investigating the ways in which geography, cosmology, kinship, and self-knowledge are reflected in cultural technologies that incorporate soil, plants, and fiber. Her work proposes imaginative ways to reconstruct oneself and expands ways of relating to one another amidst the historical and ongoing effects of imperialism across the world.

She has exhibited at the Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena, CA); Center for Arts, Research, and Alliances (New York, NY); Museum of Contemporary Art (Tucson, AZ); Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art (Winnipeg, MB, Canada); John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI); and Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, among many other venues. In 2022, LA Metro commissioned hu to design a large-scale mosaic artwork for the future UCLA/Westwood Purple Line Metro Station slated to open for the 2028 Summer Olympics. Other public art commissions include California State University, Dominguez Hills and We Rise/Art Rise produced by the Institute for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and Los Angeles Nomadic Division .hu was awarded the Fellowship for Visual Artists from the California Community Foundation and a residency at Headlands Center for the Arts in 2022.

She has been supported by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the California Arts Council and has been nominated for the United States Artists Fellowship. Her writing has been published by Amerasia Journal, the world’s leading interdisciplinary journal in Asian American and Pacific Islander studies, and her artwork has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, Artforum, CARLA, Hyperallergic, and many other publications.