I am right here.
Welcome to my site. Here you will find the various endings and beginnings of my creative work and various projects I have had the pleasure of participating in and generating. In my capacity as a creator in the Canadian arts community, I have had the fortune of working during COVID-19 with several commissions and residencies in varying artistic formats from coast to coast. The work I make and participate in is often interdisciplinary and genre-stretching asking my collaborators, as well as my audiences, to bend the limits of their predisposed notions around theatre, dance, and individuality on stage, screen, or behind the scenes. As a Queer Woman of Colour, the teams I assemble are with people that have similar identity and beliefs to mine; the gumption to innovate archaic and outdated practices/methods of creation and presentation, the understanding and power that representation holds in what we consume, and those who believe in the power of art.
If you are 'here', I encourage you to click around - it is a website after all ;)
Enjoy your stay, and I welcome your return.
亚 女弟
(she/her)
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artistic statement
Straddling sincerity and mockery, Tia Ashley Kushniruk's (亚 女弟) artistic milieu swings wildly from honesty to parody, indelicately proclaiming the hypocrisies of what it really means to be a person living today. Not shying away from informal performance art, 5 minute stand-up sets, to high end kpop light shows, Kushniruk's work cross examines the confusing toxic barrage of what a contemporary western identity is with her own lived experience of being a 1st generation queer mixed race Chinese-Canadian from a working class family. Key to Kushniruk's work is her ability to place nightmarish existential horrors into live stage experiences. In her 2020 work monolith, Tia examines consent, command, obedience, and violence through the relationship between a director and their subordinate in a 'groundhog day' loop, clouding the audience into a distrust of both players in the space. Who actually has power, and how far will someone go to show that power over the other?
Kushniruk's adaptable artistry is crafted through an encyclopedic lens of current pop-culture, high risk/high reward style theatre making, and her dynamically magnetic stage presence and poetic physical vibrancy. As the broader realm of Canadian art continues further into reflective pieces of passive somber beauty, Kushniruk's work is like a flash bomb going off in a dark closet; violent, shocking, blinding, and potentially able to make you rethink why you thought testing a flash bomb in a closet was a good idea in the first place.
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream - Harlan Ellision
biography
Tia Ashley Kushniruk (亚 女弟) is a Chinese-Ukrainian Queer Woman based in ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ (Amiskwacîwâskahikan) Treaty 6/Métis Territory of Edmonton AB. Since 2013 she has been affiliated with the Cirque Du Soleil and an artistic producer of Toy Guns Dance Theatre. She has had the pleasure of performing works of Antony Hamilton, Benjamin Kamino, Alyssa Martin, Heidi Strauss, Christopher House, Shay Kuebler, Christianne Ullmark - touring Nationally and Internationally since 2013. Her own work has been presented by The Beijing International Dance Festival, Springboard's Fluid Festival, Common Grounds Dance Festival, Festival Internacional Nomada, Dancing on the Edge, Fluid Festival, Found Festival, Mile Zero, and the New Dance Arts Institute (formerly the School of TDT). Tia's illustration and animation work has been commissioned by mallo, Here for Now, Plastic Orchid Factory, Two Big Steps, and adelheid/The NAC. She is the first recipient of the Catalyst Confluence Fellowship and a 2023 EATF recipient. Kushniruk recently finished a mentorship with Toronto-based performance artist Bridget Moser.
performance c/v click HERE
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Thank you to the Edmonton Arts Council, The Edmonton Arts Trust Fund, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts for your support in my artistic practise, presentation and performance.
image taken from The 2018 Beijing International Dance Festival with Kate Algrame
