“Magical…the sheer breadth of the imagery…is unlike anything you’ve seen before.”  – Los Angeles Times

Miwa Matreyek is an animator, director, designer and performer based in Los Angeles.  Matreyek’s work blurs the line between real and unreal. Coming from a background in animation by way of collage, Miwa Matreyek is a performance artist who creates live, staged performances where she interacts with her animations as a shadow silhouette, creating work at the cross section of cinematic and theatrical, fanatical and tangible, illusionistic and physical. Her work exists in a dreamlike visual narrative space, emotionally guiding the audience through narratives that weave together surreal and poetic moments, highlighting the conflict between man and nature. Her work exists both at the realm of the hand-made and tech. She travel as a one woman show, often incorporating artist talks and workshop along with shows. Her work often explores themes related to environmentalism, urban planning, global warming, and water conservation.

Miwa received her MFA for Experimental Animation and Integrated Media from CalArts in 2007. She performs her interdisciplinary shadow performances all around the world, in various contexts, including animation/film festivals, theater/performance festivals, puppet festivals, art museums, science museums, tech conferences, and universities. A few examples are TEDGlobal, Sundance (New Frontier, 2011/2014), Future of Storytelling, Exploratorium, MOMA, Adler Planetarium, ISEA conference, Meta.Morph (Norway), Anima Mundi (Brazil) and many more.

Miwa is also a co-founder and collaborator of the multi-media theater company, Cloud Eye Control. She is a recipient of the Creative Capital Award (2013), Sherwood Award (2016), and Princess Grace Award. (2007, with subsequent project funding in 2009 and 2013.)