Rika Lin (aka Yoshinojo Fujima)
Rika Lin (aka Yoshinojo Fujima) (she/her) is a shin-nisei, a part of postwar Japanese American diaspora, and an interdisciplinary performing artist, dancemaker, and Grandmaster in Fujima style Japanese classical dance. An active member of Asian Improv aRts Midwest, she is continuously crafting contemporary awareness with identity and tradition. In 2017 she received a 3Arts Make a Wave award and was also a 2017 Links Hall Artistic Associate Curatorial Resident, where she began her “Beyond the Box” series, which champions female performers. She concluded her 2017 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist year with a performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s “SHareOUT!” festival with Asobi: Playing Within Time. She continued her queries as a High Concept Labs Sponsored Artist in Spring 2018. She was also awarded the John D. and Susan P. Diekman fellowship for the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Autumn of 2019.
Lin’s choreography, which stems from traditional pedagogy, lulls people into believing what at first appears to be a traditional Japanese dance but is in fact a transgression filled with subtle expressions of humor and protest. Lin blends traditional aesthetics with contemporary music and movement practices to make dance pieces relevant with 21st century ideas of roles and identity. She was awarded the Master Apprentice Ethnic Folk Arts Grant (2023 as a Master, previously as an Apprentice) by the Illinois Arts Council Agency and has been adapting the pedagogy of traditional Japanese classical dance with her mentor/teacher, Fujima Shunojo. As a High Concept Labs Fellow (2021, 2022), she continued to develop her virtual reality project, Kurokami: E{m} urge, #ChooseYourReality. Working and presenting with both traditional and contemporary narratives allows her to engage with the community to highlight cultural differences and to provoke discourse on social constructs, gender, race, and ethnic identity. The most recent iteration, Beyond the Box V: I{m}Perceptions #ChooseYourReality, was presented as a part of her ongoing “Beyond the Box” series, collaborating with creatives including audio technicians, dancers, filmmakers, and experimental musicians as a Links Hall Co-Mission Fellow (2023).
Photo by Michelle Reid.
Featured Artworks
Beyond the Box V: I{m}Perceptions
Co-MISSION Festival, Links Hall, 2023. Photo by Michelle Reid.
Beyond the Box V: I{m}Perceptions, with Jamie Kempkers.
Co-MISSION Festival, Links Hall, 2023. Photo by Michelle Reid.
Kurokami E{m}Urge #ChooseYourReality, 2021
Oculus 2/Meta Headset.
Rika Lin (aka Yoshinojo Fujima) has crowd-funded a project with 3AP
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- $5,180 raised of $5,000 goal
- 0 Days 0:00:00 LEFT
As a contemporary performer trained in the centuries-old art form of Japanese classical dance, I have an ambitious goal of expanding this legacy practice with new performance techniques and modern ideas of identity. Beyond the Box is a series of …
Read more about Beyond the Box -
- $5,017 raised of $5,000 goal
- 0 Days 0:00:00 LEFT
With this campaign, I am seeking to adapt one of my latest dance performances into an experimental film that incorporates virtual reality technology and other contemporary interventions in traditional Japanese classical dance. This project, “Kurokami E{m}Urge,” is part of a …
Read more about Kurokami E{m}Urge