Asia Stewart is a performance artist who relies on her body to represent how quotidian forms of colonial, capitalist, and patriarchal violence are embodied. Her performances, which feature looped behaviors, flirt with excess and absurdity to rival the sheer incomprehensibility of the systems and structures that have been manufactured to oppress people in our society. Everyday household items appear as props or costumes in her performances and ground them in private domestic spaces. Despite the interiority and intimacy of these locations, the characters Stewart creates find it impossible to fully extricate themselves from social norms.
Asia Stewart is a Brooklyn-based performance artist and classical vocalist whose conceptual work centers the body as a living archive. After receiving degrees in the social sciences from Cambridge and Harvard University, she has sought ways to embody abstract sociological theories and transform the language specific to studies of race, gender, sexuality, and diaspora into materials that can be felt and worn on the body. As a National YoungArts Winner in Musical Theatre and a former National Arts Policy Roundtable Fellow with Americans for the Arts, Stewart uses her past experiences on stage to inject her work with a heightened sense of theatricality. In 2020, Stewart concluded her first independent performance series entitled Graft, which attempts to capture the violence that constructions of whiteness and femininity wrought on Black bodies.
Asia Stewart's residency at NARS is made possible by New York City Artist Corps (CAC).
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