performance of voice, body, and stories; installation
photo by Poh Yu Khing. courtesy of The Listening Biennial Singapore
Aine Nakamura is a performer, artist, poet and improviser. Her performance of sung and spoken voice, and movement tells stories. She focuses on the sensibility and sensitivity in listening to hidden stories that are her interventions in traditional power structures, across multiple cultural/transcultural sites. She is attuned to the potentialities of an injured voice and on the listening and sensing bodies. In her works and research, she explores the presence of wounds and repair, the condition of vulnerability, kindness, and the transdisciplinary art-making. She works in sounding/voicing, movement, storytelling/poetry, object-making, and site-specific composition. She seeks to develop the concepts of fragile kindness and love to access pathways to vulnerability.
Her transnational and transgenerational background, having been born in the Pacific Northwest and growing up in two countries of the U.S. and then mostly Japan, led her to a quest of betweenness and beneathness. Gender politics has affected her consciousness as a woman artist exploring transformation. The search beneath surfaces has become a site of exploration and a place of mending and soul. In addition to love and fragile kindness, she is interested in folds or wrinkles, that are ungraspable but makes art and conversations open to opacity and evolvement.
Her recent works include solo performance work Breath In This World, premiered at Indexical in SC (March 6 2026), in which synthesis of sung voice, spoken words of poetry, movement, a line and a shape is realized through a story about wounds and love, and moon and eyes; month-long site-specific exhibition and performance project hands on tape (June 13-July 12 2025), presented at The Lab in SF, unfolded over research, conversations and collaborations, exploring architectural changes and hidden spaces, silk, erased labor, and metamorphosis of bodies and materials; solo performance of sung and spoken voice and body Under an Unnamed Flower during an invitation to the 50th International Theatre Festival at the Venice Biennale (Jun 26-Jul 3 2022), focused on war, weaving, silk, mourning and mending, gestures and objects connecting the multiple; solo performance project Circle hasu We plant seeds in the spring of mountains, presented at Theatertreffen at Berliner Festspiele upon an invitation as a Stückemarkt artist (May 11-15 2022) after its premiere of the same titled exhibition at the Gallatin Galleries (Jul 16-Aug 13 2021), focused on time-transcending healing and recovering in the rhythm of season change.
Her idiosyncratic approach to listening, sounding, moving, storytelling and spaces also results in special collaborations.
2025 Commissioned Artist of The Lab. Awardee of the Venice Biennale 2022 Site-Specific Performance Grant, the Fulbright Fellowship (2021-2022, Berlin), The Leo Bronstein Homage Award from NYU (2020), and The Honorable Mention Award for the 2020 Pauline Oliveros New Genre Prize.
Aine E. Nakamura, with the piece she presented from her transborder project, Under an Unnamed Flower, by virtue of a melodic use of the voice, of an original process of deconstructing and reconstructing language, of freeform figurations and three-dimensional words that without prejudice reach across the boundaries of Theatre, Dance and Music, bouncing us within a poetic vortex of light, that spills forth visions, dreams, memories, colours and feelings, catapults us – while maintaining an uninterrupted relationship with her personal past, her family and one of her countries Japan – into a Present that is highly ambivalent and complex, in which the dramatic events of History, such as wars, the violence of invasions, the uprooting and loss of one’s personal land, intertwine with the breath of her rarefied and enigmatic narrations, implacably becoming entangled in her private life as an exile, as a wanderer who pleas for non-violence and quiet resistance.
Intimately connected to her château intérieur and the surrounding spiritual world, her ashen face appearing historiated by the snow, Aine E. Nakamura, as an unnamed flower that lives at the site in the wind, her legs and arms constantly moving for the accuracy of the Ritual, her nimble eyes scrutinising contemporary society, her ears collecting the stories that spin through the airwaves as an antidote to oblivion, in a symbiotic relationship with Nature (plants, animals, earth) and Humanity in its entirety, absorbing their every mood, listens to their voices which she then relaunches in a peacefully “revolutionary” way, reclaiming the emotional universes that each of us carries within.
As she thus moves away from the routine courses of performance and the conventional modulations of sound in the western tradition, with an enthralling plurilingualism unfettered from the obligations of reality, Aine E. Nakamura morphs into a sort of hypnotic pied piper who, behind her apparent childlike awe, leaves us spellbound – like one of those creatures in a fairy – talking in soft tones of things that she actually steadfastly disapproves of, and refusing, even when the darkness forces its way like a spectral beast into the labyrinth of existence, the unavoidability of compromise and objecting to the oppressive social coercion of the political pigsty.
- Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte, Venice Biennale 2022 Site-Specific Performance
Its intense vulnerability and the beautiful layering of voices—distant, close, together with [her] movements, flowing was very moving.
- Annea Lockwood
Circle Hasu evokes in me a deep need and desire for a geopoetical sensibility that emphasizes care and repair. Acts of recovery held together by the delicate bonding of voice, body, and memories voiding otherness. - Ogutu Muraya
Circle Hasu We plant seeds in the spring of mountains” she impressively switches between her Japanese and American identity. In fact the cultural split of the two identities is constitutional for her minimalistic, contemplative yet intense performance on stage. It is astonishing how deep the simple lines of her storytelling took us into the alienations of an Asian woman in New York. And the elegance of her choreography up into the tips of her fingers provide a glimpse into the rich traditions of Japanese dance. Along with her short performative interventions, Aine Nakamura transformed the space in front of the Haus der Berliner Festspiele into a sacral landscape in which every detail suddenly became important and a little stone was valued equally to a vulnerable and fragile living existence. - Laudatory speech Stückemarkt by Thomas Frank, Marleen Ilg, Enrico Lübbe (Schauspiel Leipzig)
Ongoing & Future Projects
○exhibition asagao at mhPROJECT Nokogirini, Hiramatsu woolen factory, opening performances on November 21, 22, 30 2025 and closing performance on January 11 2026, in partnership with Aichi Triennale 2025: A Time Between Ashes and Roses, November 21 2025-January 11 2026, Ichinomiya, Japan
○trio performance with Jacob Felix Heule and Kevin Corcoran, Dead Noise Station, January 19 2026, SF
○premiere of solo work Breath in This World at Indexical, March 6 2026, Santa Cruz
○performances with Wilson Shook and Kevin Corcoran, March 22 Berkeley 2727, March 26 Sub Rosa, Santa Cruz, March 28 Sutro Cave, SF
○duo performance with Kanoko Nishi-Smith, April 12 2026, Canessa Gallery, SF
○solo performance at UC San Diego Department of Music, Spring Festival, April 18 2026, San Diego, CA
○performance with Rieko Okuda, May 16 2026, Kühlspot Social Club, Berlin
○residency and performance at ZK/U, Openhaus on May 21 2026, Berlin
○solo work Breath in This World at ZK/U, May 28 2026, Berlin
○trio with Kevin Corcoran and Jacob Felix Heule, Bric-a-Brac, June 3 2026, SF
○solo work Breath in This World at UrBANGUILD, July 28 2026, Kyoto, Japan
○new solo work at Djerassi Resident Artists Program commissioned by Unfolding Grounds, August 16 2026, Woodside, CA
○collab with Bonnie Han Jones at Elastic Arts, October 22 2026, Chicago
○performance upon Yoko Ono’s Instructions for Improvising Across Art and Media, 2026 Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association, October 2026, Chicago
○duo performance with Myra Melford, Harry Bernstein house concert series, February 7 2027, Berkeley
Selective Works
○collaborative performance with Carole Kim and Kozue Matsumoto, Wende Museum, Angel City Jazz Festival, LA / 2025.10.15
○duo performance with Yan Jun, Dead Noise Station, SF / 2025.9.26
○solo performance love is the song at Listening Biennial Third Edition, Singapore / 2025.8.30
○Winslow House Project residency, performance with Ava Koohbor, Vallejo / 2025.8.18-2025.8.25
○hands on tape, site-specific performance and installation project, commissioned by The Lab, SF / 2025.6.13-2025.7.12
○solo performance, Harry Bernstein’s concert series, Berkeley / 2025.5.24
○solo performance, the Holloway Poetry Series, reading by poet Brandon Som, introduction by Hyungtae Kim, Maude Fife Room, Berkeley / 2025.4.22
○collaborative residency with Carole Kim, Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, Berkeley / 2024.12.15-16
○trio performance with Wilson Shook and Kevin Corcoran, Temescal Art Center, Oakland / 2024.11.23
○solo performance, SCOPE Concert III, WU Performance Hall, UC Berkeley / 2024.11.15
○duo performance with Kevin Corcoran, Emergent Sound Practices, Berkeley / 2024.11.10
○short film Tiger Cocoon, Twin Cities Asian and Middle Eastern Short Film Festival, Minneapolis / 2024.10.25
○solo performance, Adobe Books, SF / 2024.10.20
○duo performance with Kanoko Nishi-Smith, West Oakland Sound Series, Oakland / 2024.10.13
○solo performance, Avery Fisher Center for Music and Media, New York University, NYC / 2024.10.8
○performance at the Listening Biennial/Listening Academy, Berlin / 2024.9.4
○solo performance, Kühlspot Social Club, Berlin / 2024.7.21
○composition Floating Tree for and with Del Sol Quartet at Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, CA / 2024.4.27
○collaborative performance project with Balinese dancer and singer Cok Pring at Sanghas Puri Saraswati, Bali, Indonesia / 2024.3.29
○Shades of Edge in collaboration with Olivia Ting at The Lab, SF / 2024.3.9
○Sonic Reservoir in collaboration with Douglas R. Ewart and Mat Muntz at Pillsbury House Theatre, Minneapolis / 2024.1.27
○OPERA: SITE with Lucie/Luc Vítková and the ensemble at Roulette Intermedium & Judson Memorial Church NYC / 2023.11.16 & 2024.5.29
○boundtogether in collaboration with Bent Duo at Brick Aux, Brooklyn / 2023.11.15
○Silkworm, performance of voice, body, fixed media, and paper at the 2023 Larnaca Biennale, Larnaca, Cyprus / 2023.10
○Honehitotsu, solo performance of voice, body, and masks created by Keiko Miyamori upon exhibition Me, The Timeless Self - within the Umwelt by Keiko Miyamori at
○Cicada, collaborative show with visual artist Olivia Ting at Center for New Music and Audio Technologies / 2023.5.7
○mystery in itself, work for Richard Worn, bass and fixed media, at Center for New Music and Audio Technologies / 2023.4.24
○but will always find, its freespace, work for Bent Duo, APNM Concert at The DiMenna Center for Classical Music / 2023.4.17
○"Aine Nakamura & Srayamurtikanti" solo, Oni no namida, and collaborative performance with Sraya MurtiKanti at Center for New Music San Francisco / 2023.3.24
○Yami and Iro 闇と色, solo performance of voice, body, paper, cloth and visual at Musiktheaterabend at UdK (Berlin University of the Arts) / 2023.3.2
○New Year's renewal solo performance of voice, body and found objects at Spectrum, Brooklyn / 2023.1.6
○Kusottare! solo performance of voice, body, objects and video at The Lab, Sound Encounters III, SFCMP & CNMAT San Francisco / 2022.12.4
○solo theater performance, Under an Unnamed Flower at La Biennale di Venezia (Venice Biennale) - Biennale Teatro Site-Specific Performance / 2022 6.26-7.3
○solo performance, Ohajiki and pink shoes, Medientheater at Humboldt University of Berlin & Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum Library / 2022 7.7-12
○solo theater performance, Circle hasu We plant seeds in the spring of mountains at Berliner Festspiele 2022 Theatertreffen - Stückemarkt / 2022.5.11-15
○An evening of listening, dreaming, voicing with Brandon LaBelle and Annette le Fort, performance at Errant Sound / 2022.4.30
○Performance at Loophole Berlin / 2022.3.14
○Oica, premiere of a mixed art of multi-channel media, voice, and body / Studiosaal HfM Hanns Eisler Berlin / 2022.2.6
○Performance at Sowieso Berlin / 2022.1.7
○composition Kaya no Soto for vocalist Kanae Mizobuchi, pianist Satoko Inoue, and tubist Kota Sakamoto / Tokyo Arts and Space / 2021.12.11
○composition Elevated Moon for cellist Craig Hultgren / presented by Composer's Voice / 2021.11.26
○Late Autumn (performance), Okaasan, and Now Our Hands are Safe (video works) / Green Hill Gallery Berlin 2021.11.5 - 12.5
○Solo show Circle hasu: We plant seeds in the spring of mountains / The Gallatin Galleries NYC 2021.7.16 - 8.13
○new work for the Masked Music Commissions, The Association for the Promotion of New Music / 2021.7
○kaeru, fixed media work, Earth Day Art Model / 2021.4
○Circle hasu, video documentation, Earth Day Art Model / 2020.4
○Circle hasu, mixed music, A Concert of Electronic Music in honor of Mario Davidovsky, winner / NY 2019.12
○Sound installation (8-channel work), Dias de Música Electroacústica, Culture and Sustainable Cities / Lisbon 2019.11
○pieces on prayer, The VU Symposium for experimental, electronic and improvised music: Pushing the envelope, My appearance was supported by C.V. Starr Fund of the Asian Pacific/American Institute and, NYU Dean's Conference Fund Award / Park City, UT July 2019
○The Two directed by Dmitry Krymov, New York Theatre Workshop / NY 2019.2
○The Unseen World premiered at the Abrons Arts Center, for and performed with the International Contemporary Ensemble / NY 2019.4
○Exploration in Sound and Body, collaborators: dancer Miki Orihara, pianist-improviser Yuko Fujiyama, and producer Junko Arita, supported by First Performance, New York University / NY 2019.3
○The Story of Oica, October New Music Festival for and performed with the Mikro Ensemblen / Oulu, Finland 2018.9
○6 stories, mixed music, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival performed with Madeleine Shapiro, Abrons Arts Center/ NY 2019.7
○The River, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts / NY 2018.5
Awards & Residencies
○The Lab, Commissioned Artist 2025
○Artist-in-Residence, Winslow House Project 2025
○Artist-in-Residence, Prelinger Library 2025
○New York Public Library Short-Term Research Fellowship poetics of peace 2022-2023
○Venice Biennale, Winner, Biennale Teatro Grants for Site-Specific Performances 2022
○Berliner Festspiele, Theatertreffen - selection to Stückemarkt 2022
○Fulbright Fellowship, Berlin, Germany 2021-2022
○Honorable Mention Award for the 2020 Pauline Oliveros New Genre Prize, The 39th IAWM Search for New Music Competition 2020
○The Leo Bronstein Homage Award, New York University 2020
○APNM 2019 Electronic Music Competition, winner 2019.12
Publications
○Body in Costume Critique in the Front Line, International Association of Theatre Critics Hong Kong, Sept 2023
○The koma top is not for spinning, fixed media, APNM, Vol. 3, Music from the Association for the Promotion of New Music, New Focus Recordings 2023
○Art to Parité (art and gender parity), essay, Parité Campaign Japan 2021
○Space Sculpting, fixed media, The SEAMUS Electroacoustic Miniatures Series - Monophonic 2020
○Composition, poem, On the Rabbit Hole, Gallatin Galleries 2020
○On the Night of the New Moon, poem, Eleven and a Half Journal 2018
Appearances
○Interview by Sofy Yuditskaya. “Aine Nakamura,” Creatrix Magazine. 2025.2.5
○Sofy Yuditskaya, Womxn who make Spiritual Machines. Doctoral Dissertation, New York University 2025
○Feature of fixed media, The koma top is not for spinning. Massachusetts, Martian Gardens Episode 1145. 2023.5.25
○Review: Les mémoires enfouies dans les pierres de Aine E. Nakamura à la Biennale de Venise by Amélie Blaustein Niddam. Toute La Culture 2022.7
○Review: Milo Rau e Aine E. Nakamura e il loro manifesto per un teatro democratico e di pace by Liliana Tangorra. Pane Acqua Culture.net 2022.7
○Review: Biennale di Venezia, un’idea di Teatro by Maria Dolores Pesce. Rumor(s)cena. 2022.7
○Review: Cronache dalla Biennale Teatro by Alessandro Cammarano. TVIWEB. 2022.7
○Review&News: Un semi di pace on VeNews 2022.6
○Artists’ Talk with Tjaša Črnigoj, Kolektiv Igralke, Aine Nakamura & Amanda Wilkin at Berliner Festspiele 2022.5
○Feature of fixed media, FEM Music Radio Show, CoLaboRadio/Freie Radios Berlin Brandenburg 2022.1
○Yomi Time, [WHO] Interview 2021.9
○Feature of fixed media, Biwa no ha. Radio Campus Brussels 2020.9
○Review: New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival 2018: EXCELLENCE by Jean Ballard Terepka 2018.7
Lectures:
○Talk, Comparative Perspectives on Culture and Society, UC Berkeley, Department of Sociology 2025.10.30
○Workshop and talk, The Listening Biennial and LASALLE College of the Arts & Listening Circle, Singapore 2025.9.1&10.18
○Workshop, UC Berkeley, Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, 2024.10.31
○Workshop, Meiji University, Tokyo Japan 2023.7.22&23, 7.29&30
○Talk, Tokyo College of Music, Tokyo Japan 2023.7.18
○Workshop and panel at The 1st International Symposium on Contemporary Asian Theatre, University of Göttingen 2022.12.8&9
○Lecture at the joint colloquium of Kolloquium Medien und Wissen & Kolloquium Mediendramaturgie, Institute for Musicology and Media Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin 2022.6.2
○Workshop, songs in bodies, at Berliner Festspiele 2022.5
○Lecture I am song itself at the symposium AKUSTISCHE INTERFACES, Humboldt University of Berlin 2022.5.4
○Lecture-recital Circle hasu My Art of Voice and Body at The 2021 McGill Music Graduate Students' Symposium & The 4th AEMC Conference on Music Communication and Performance 2021.3 & 2021.6
○Lecture-recital Voice as Body, Voice and Body at The Music and Movement Virtual Conference, University of Pittsburgh, & Penn State 2021 New-Music Festival and Symposium 2021.1 & 2021.3
Study:
○UC Berkeley, doctoral candidate, Fragile Kindness: Performance and the Politics of the Wounded Presence
○Fulbright fellow, Humboldt University of Berlin, and Berlin University of the Arts 2021-2022
○MA, Composition and Performance concentration, New York University 2018-2020
○Jazz & Contemporary Music, The New School, BFA program 2016-2018
○BA, foreign studies and curatorial studies, Sophia (Jochi) University 2004
○special thanks to Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio and dancer Yoshito Ohno
○special thanks to dancer Yuko Kaseki
○body training under dancer oguri
○Okinawan traditional music (uta-sanshin) under Isamu Goya, Noborikawa-ryu
For my full C.V., please contact.
photo by Andrea Avezzù. courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
photo by Natalie Jenkins. courtesy of The Lab