Asami Terajima

is a war reporter for the Ukrainian English-language media outlet Kyiv Independent, covering the Russian war against Ukraine.
Originally from Japan, Terajima moved to Ukraine during childhood and completed her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration in the U.S. She covered business topics for the Ukrainian English-language media outlet Kyiv Post. She is the winner of the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism 2023 (Local Reporter category) and the George Weidenfeld Prize, awarded as part of Germany’s Axel Springer Award 2023. She was also featured in the Media Development Foundation’s “25 under 25: Young and Bold” 2023 list.

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Yaryna is a visual artist, performer, co-curator, and lecturer. She works across various mediums including performance art, painting, graphics, and installation, exploring the concept of presence through the body and its visual expressions.Having graduated from the Lviv National Academy of Arts, Yaryna was a grant recipient of the Gaude Polonia scholarship program by the Polish Minister of Culture and was shortlisted for the Young Ukrainian Artists Competition MYXi (2015) and the II Youth Biennale of Contemporary Art of Ukraine (2019). Yaryna has showcased her work in solo exhibitions and art projects across Ukraine, Poland, and Spain. She has participated in numerous exhibitions, performance art festivals, and conferences worldwide, spanning countries like Ukraine, Poland, Italy, Norway, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Germany, France, Portugal, Spain, Israel, Japan, Thailand, Canada, and the USA.An active organizer and curator, Yaryna co-organized the School of Performance (2019) as part of the International festival “Days of Art Performance in Lviv”, as well as online residencies like “At the place” and “Performance Archive. Ukraine” (2020). She also shares her expertise as a teacher at the Department of Contemporary Art Practices at the Lviv National Academy of Arts.Yaryna’s recent works have been featured at А231 Federação (Salvador, Brazil), JDMooney Foundation and FLOW / Out of Site Chicago (USA), Ukraine!UNMUTED (Kaunas, Lithuania), and BIFPA’23 (Belfast, Northern Ireland/UK).
Yaryna Shumska
Visual artist, performer, co-curator, and lecturer