Miwa Matreyek

Miwa Matreyek, is an animator, designer, and performer currently based in Vancouver BC. She is an Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University in their School for the Contemporary Arts in the Theatre Production and Design area. She has been an internationally touring independent artist since 2010. Coming from a background in animation by way of collage, Matreyek creates live, staged performances where she interacts with her animations as a shadow silhouette, at the intersection of cinematic and theatrical, fantastical and tangible, illusionistic and physical. Her work attempts to make invisible worlds visible while weaving surreal and poetic narratives of creation and destruction, micro and macro worlds, and the tension and conflict between modern humanity and nature.

Her work exists both at the realm of the hand-made and digital. She travels as a one-woman show, often incorporating artist talks and workshops. 

Her work has been presented at the Sundance Film Festival as part of the New Frontiers section, MoMA, SFMoMA, Lincoln Center, REDCAT, The Walker Art Center, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and many more.

Her work Infinitely Yours won Ars Electronica’s Golden Nica prize for computer animation in 2020.

She received her MFA for Experimental Animation and Integrated Media from California Institute of the Arts in 2007.

She is a co-founding member of the multi-media theater company, Cloud Eye Control

She is a recipient of the Sherwood Award (2016), Creative Capital Award (2013), Princess Grace Award (2007), and Princess Grace Foundation’s Special Projects award (2009, 2012, 2019). Cloud Eye Control is a recipient of several awards and grants including MAP fund (2013), the National Theater Project grant by NEFA (2013), NPN Creation Fund (2008). Her recent work Infinitely Yours won the Golden Nica for Computer Animation at Ars Electronica 2020.

She has taken part in residencies at McDowell Colony (2014), as well as Headlands Center for the Arts (2011).

She has made commissioned performance work (Pop-up magazine), as well as worked as a video designer for the Austin-based theater company Rude Mechs, Norway-based dance company Carte Blanche, and the Vancouver-based Dance company 605 Collective. She also works intermittently as a freelance commercial animator/designer in the motion graphics industry in Los Angeles.