The Steven B. Jung Theatre Artist Fund is an annual award given to an emerging Asian Canadian theatre artist to further develop experience in the field of costume or set design or technical theatre. We are pleased to announce the 2026 recipient is Jasmine Liaw with her project to name language.
Bio
Jasmine Liaw is an interdisciplinary artist moving fluidly between roles of director, designer, curator in contemporary dance performance, new media, and experimental film. Evidenced in collaboration and community, her work investigates the fractured movement of language within transcultural narratives intersecting her Hakka-Chinese diaspora, queer temporalities and ecologies, and technological relationships to time displacement. In the words of Immony Mèn, she views the body as a recorder, and at the same time, a record keeper.
Select national and international presentations include Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, The Asian Arts & Culture Trust with Holt Renfrew, Northwest Film Forum’s Local Sightings Film Festival (USA), Gallery 44, Interaccess, Images Festival, Experimental Series – Salt Lake City (USA), Thessaloniki Cinedance International (Greece), Light Moves Festival (Ireland), On Main Gallery, Pleasure Dome, and more.
Project
to name language is an interdisciplinary project investigating Liaw’s Hakka-Chinese heritage and its understanding of embodiment and ideology – a hard place deeply rooted within a history of migration,
marginalization, and resilience. Combining new media projection and modular table fabrication, Liaw will be using this opportunity to deepen operational knowledge in CNC and laser machines, and interactive projection mapping. Visualizing the topography of the body, each table will be lasered with holes and layered engravings, visualizing the textural terrain of embodied epigenetics, relation, and be-longing. Advancing her skills in projection mapping, she hopes to create room for light-based materials to represent the interconnectedness, collective intelligence in language, and invisible infrastructures entangled within inter-heritage studies – preparing her for non-traditional theatre spaces.
If you would like to make a contribution towards the Steven B. Jung Theatre Artist Fund, you can do so at this link. Thank you!
