Yiru CHEN

Yiru CHEN graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a major in Film and Television production and two minors in Psychology and American Sign Language in 2019. She has received her MA degree at Teachers College, Columbia University, from the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Education Program. Currently, Yiru works as a classroom teacher at St.Francis de Sales School for the Deaf. She is an active member of both Shanghai and New York signing communities. She remains a strong advocate for sign language education and accessible, inclusive arts.

Yiru is skillful at producing poetic media and writing. The experiences she has both in front of and behind the camera have allowed her to develop a unique personal aesthetic. Her works always explore the concepts of anthropology as well as universal emotions. Her thesis short film Handscape has been selected for more than 20 international film festivals and won the Grand Jury Prize at Shanghai Queer Film Festival. She has interned at HERE Arts Center as a programming assistant for the artistic director. She has also worked for the documentary director Stephanie Black as her personal assistant. Her first feature-length documentary film with performance artists Eiko Otake and Wen Hui will be published in 2022/2023.