iris yirei hu

iris yirei hu is a multidisciplinary artist from Los Angeles who works across painting, installation, intercultural collaborations, writing, and public art. She roots her art practice in processes of material and spiritual transformation, as evidenced in labor intensive pieces and installations that explore the subterranean realms of grief and loss, cycles of life and death, the earthly and the otherworldly, and the infinitely evolving self. Central to her practice is learning from and working across territories and peoples, through which she investigates how geography, kinship, and the sacred are reflected in cultural technologies and ecological practices. Her work intimately probes the sentience in the natural world and the vulnerability in human connection across cultural, geographic, and generational differences, through which she creates fluid and relational ways to understand oneself and others

In 2022, LA Metro commissioned her to design a large-scale mosaic artwork for the future UCLA/Westwood Purple Line Metro Station slated to open for the 2028 Summer Olympics. Public art commissions include California State University, Dominguez Hills and We Rise/Art Rise produced by the Institute for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA-LA) and Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), among others.

Her writing has been published by the internationally recognized interdisciplinary journal in Asian American and Pacific Islander studies, Amerasia Journal, and her art work has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, Artforum, CARLA,Hyperallergic, and many other publications. She holds a BA in Art from UCLA and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University.

SELECT Exhibitions

  • From the Ground Up: Nurturing Diversity in Hostile Environments, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA, 2024

  • Cheeky Blue Planet, Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA), New York, NY, 2022

  • Pakook koy Peshaax (The Sun Enters the Earth and Leaves the Earth) with Julia Bogany and Megan Dorame - LAND, ICA LA WE RISE, Los Angeles State Historic Park, CA, 2022

  • Plein Air, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, AZ, 2022

  • 2020: Sovereign Intimacies, Plug-in ICA and Gallery 1C03, Winnipeg, MB, Canada

  • Survival Guide: Spring in The Autotopographers, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI, 2019

  • Here, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 2018

Selected Residencies & Awards

  • Ruffin Distinguished Artists-in-Residence with Paula Wilson, Department of Art, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 2026

  • Arts/Industry Artist-in-Residence, Kohler Co., Sheboygan, WI, 2025

  • Surf Point Foundation Artist-in-Residence, York, ME, 2025

  • Cultural Worker Fellowship, meztli projects and the Mellon Foundation, 2024

  • Armory Center for the Arts Artist-in-Residence, Pasadena, CA, 2023-25

  • No Lugar — Arte Contemporáneo Artist-in-Residence, Quito, Ecuador, 2023

  • Fellowship for Visual Artists, California Community Foundation, 2022

  • Headlands Center for the Arts Artist-in-Residence, Sausalito, CA, 2022