Yara Travieso

Yara Travieso (BFA ’09, dance) is a Cuban-Venezuelan American anti-disciplinary artist and educator working in dance, performance, cinema, video art, ritual, and protest. She was the 2023–24 resident artist with Chelsea Factory, a United States Artist Fellow, a Creative Capital recipient, a NYSCA Film and Media grant recipient, and a winner of a National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Grant via the Ford Foundation. In 2024, she was named the Open Interval Fellow by the Simons Foundation and Gibney Dance. At Juilliard, Travieso won the John Erskine prize for faculty research. Her productions have been featured at the Park Avenue Armory, Lincoln Center, Performance Space NY, Public Theater, Knockdown Center, the High Line, Opéra National de Lorraine France, Chelsea Factory, New World Symphony Center, Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, and other venues. Her films and visual art have been presented by El Museo del Barrio, Film at Lincoln Center, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, PBS, SXSW, NY Latino Film Festival, Museum of the Moving Image, and Vizcaya Museum, among others.

In 2019, Travieso collaborated with the Women’s March and Chilean Feminist collective LASTESIS to lead a performance protest involving 25,000 women. Travieso co-founded the Borscht Film Festival, which IndieWire called “the weirdest film festival on the planet.” Travieso co-founded the festival in 2005 and co-ran it until 2010. The festival received the Knights Arts Grant and the Miami New Times Mastermind Award. She has led lectures and workshops for the Ford Foundation, Park Avenue Armory, Google, MOMA, BAM, NYU, Fordham University, National YoungArts Foundation, the New School, Gallim, UnionDocs, and Ghetto Film School, among others. Travieso is the artistic director of the Gallim Moving Artist Residency program and has facilitated more than 30 artists in residence there. She is the recipient of residencies at EMPAC, PS122 RAMP, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, BRICLab, Streb, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, the Bessie Schonberg AIR, and Gibney’s Open Interval Residency.