Yonsei

Jenn Kitagawa

Jenn Kitagawa is an award-winning multidisciplinary visual artist who grew up in the city of Edmonton as well as the southern farmlands surrounding Taber, Alberta. She is of Japanese descent and is 4th generation, or Yonsei and Scottish. Graduating from MacEwan University (Edmonton, Alberta) and the Alberta College of Art & Design (Calgary, Alberta), she […]

Ashley Sugimoto

Ashley Sugimoto is a yonsei (fourth-generation), mixed-race Japanese Canadian filmmaker operating on the unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territories. Her work is driven by her mixed roots and explores mixed identity, and intergenerational trauma within diaspora communities. She graduated with a BFA in film production from Simon Fraser University In 2018. In […]

Taya Mikado

Taya Mikado (she/her) is a mixed-race Japanese-Canadian Yonsei hailing from Southern Alberta but currently anchored in Tkaronto. She dabbles in poetry, prose and digital art while working towards becoming an innovative and compassionate lawyer. Losing her father to suicide at 13, and her mother to a motorbike accident at 18, has given Taya significant insight […]

Kevin Takahide Lee

Yonsei, Kevin Takahide Lee is a firm believer that the arts must be interwoven with social needs. After graduating from UBC and UWO in opera and voice performance, he has been involved with productions focused on bringing attention to IBPOC stories. For over a decade Takahide-san has portrayed Japanese Canadian veteran Zennosuke Inouye with the […]

Lara Okihiro

Dr. Lara Okihiro is a yonsei writer, researcher, and educator of mixed Japanese Canadian heritage. Growing up in the diverse, working-class Dixon Road neighbourhood in Toronto, she was close to her Japanese Canadian grandparents and often visited her Anglo-Irish Canadian grandmother on her rural Ontario farm. Though Lara did not like reading as a kid, […]

Kaylie Hatashita(Kaylie Kreatrix)

Pronoun: She/Her Multi-disciplinary performer, Kaylie is a circus artist, musician, and all round creative soul born in Ottawa, Ontario. Growing up she studied violin and dance, and as an adult she discovered circus arts. What started as a hobby quickly turned into a passion and obsession. She traveled the world teaching and performing ‘buugeng’ an […]

Alexa Hatanaka

Alexa Hatanaka engages in time-intensive, historic processes connected to her Japanese heritage that support her thinking around community-building, environment, and honouring evolving cultural practices such as relief-printmaking, papermaking and kamiko, the practice of sewing garments out of konnyaku starch-strengthened washi (Japanese paper). Her seminal work “Hazmat Suit (unborn/ reborn tsunami)” was acquired by the National […]

Kate Kamo McHugh

Kate Kamo McHugh is a dance and theatre artist from Kitchener, Ontario. Recent highlights include an artist residency at the National Arts Centre, presenting a solo piece at IMPACT 21 Theatre Festival, and performing with Cosmic Fishing Theatre. In 2021 Kate co-facilitated a movement-based workshop for the Newcomer Youth Program in partnership with MT Space […]

Leanne Toshiko Simpson

Leanne Toshiko Simpson is a mixed-race Yonsei writer and psychiatric survivor from Scarborough, Ontario. She is a graduate of UTSC Creative Writing and the University of Guelph’s MFA program. Currently, she is a doctoral student in Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto, studying the intergenerational impact of Japanese Canadian internment. She teaches courses […]

Jennifer Aoki

Jennifer Aoki (she/her) is a Japanese Canadian performance and emerging choreographer based in Vancouver, British Columbia, the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She is inspired by the infinite possibilities of human movement, and she strives to build meaningful connections through her creative work. Her work celebrates the intersectionality of her identities […]

Jennifer Spence

Jennifer Spence is a multiple award-winning actor known for her regular roles on You Me Her, Travelers and Continuum. Born in Toronto to a Japanese Canadian mother and British Canadian father, she studied at the prestigious National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal before landing in Vancouver where she began her career in film and […]

Daniel Akira Stadnicki

Daniel Akira Stadnicki is an award-winning, mixed Asian-Canadian drummer, scholar, and popular music educator based in Amiskwaciy Waskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta) with strong family ties to the Japanese community of Hamilton, Ontario. Specializing in adapted drum kit for a wide range of global folk, roots, and traditional artists—including Farhad Kosravi, Jaron Freeman-Fox, Spencer Murray, Dana Wylie, […]

Natalie Murao

Natalie Murao is a Japanese Canadian director, writer, and creative storyteller. She aims to expand the notion of Asian diasporic cinema by creating an in-betweenness of styles that embody the diaspora itself. A BFA graduate of Simon Fraser University, she has received mentorship from Sundance Ignite, VIFF Catalyst, and Experimental Forest Films. Her short films […]

Lauren Brevner

Lauren Brevner is a multidisciplinary artist based in Vancouver B.C on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Her Japanese-Trinidadian heritage deeply inspires her practice with a focus on matriarchal influence. Her work combines traditional approaches to portrait painting with themes […]

Miyeko Ferguson

Miyeko Ferguson is a Tkaronto / Toronto based dance artist. She graduated from Toronto Metropolitan University’s Performance Dance program. She has worked with choreographers such as Laurence Lemieux, James Kudelka, Peggy Baker, Naishi Wang, Jera Wolfe, Kate Hilliard, Jennifer Nichols, Julia Aplin, and Vicki St. Denys. She has performed with Compagnie de la Citadelle, Canadian […]