Denise Uyehara: Maps of City and Body

Maps of City and Body: Shedding Light on the Performances of Denise Uyehara presents the complete texts of Big Head and Maps of City and Body, two of Uyehara’s most acclaimed shows. In Big Head, Uyehara questions the logic of political and personal rhetoric by exploring the relationship between Japanese American internment camps and post-September 11th racial violence. Maps of City and Body takes on subjects ranging from the trails left behind by childhood kisses to the reimagining of a grandmother’s fiery suicide, to explore how memories mark our bodies. In both works, Uyehara remains unflinchingly attentive to the transformative details that give our lives shape. This selection of Uyehara’s performance pieces has been designed to function as both experience and documentation. It includes images from her performances, as well as detailed stage directions. It also includes detailed descriptions of Uyehara’s other public art investigations, as well as a conversation with dancer/scholar Yutian Wong, a chronology of readings and stagings, and a bibliography. Maps of City and Body is the first in a series of books from Kaya Press on Asian diasporic performance artists.