Welcoming New Faculty at UC Irvine’s Claire Trevor School of the Arts

Three new UC Irvine faculty members join the Departments of Art, Drama and Dance

The Claire Trevor School of the Arts (CTSA) welcomes three new faculty members this fall: Na Mira (Department of Art), Yee Eun Nam (Department of Drama) and E. Macias (Department of Dance). Each faculty member’s creative and professional experience in their respective fields continues to move the creative engine at CTSA forward.

Na Mira – Department of Art

Na Mira’s work engages the boundaries of perception through video, film, sculpture, sound and text. Mira’s practice incorporates animism, a belief system that all things have a spiritual essence, that challenges historically produced apparatuses of image-making. Their work has been exhibited at numerous prestigious institutions, including the Institute of Contemporary Art and Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, The Kitchen, Participant Inc., Drawing Center, Company Gallery in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Internationally, Mira has exhibited at ArtSpace Sydney, Kunsthalle Zurich and Seoul Museum of Art, among others.

“I'm excited to join the UC Irvine Department of Art at a time when concerns around emerging technologies and image-making could not be more urgent," shared Mira. "My teaching is inspired by the radical experimental history of Video Art, using critical media literacy to question the dynamics of the gaze, the signal and its distribution. Drawing on indigenous, queer and other sociopolitical materialism alongside structural film and phenomenology, I work with systems that are hard to see.”

Mira’s work has been featured in major biennials, including the Gwangju Biennale, Venice Biennale, and Whitney Biennial, and is part of public collections at the Walker Art Center, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Whitney Museum of American Art. Awards and fellowships include recognition from the Rauschenberg Foundation, Artadia, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Mira holds an M.F.A. in New Genres from UCLA and a B.F.A. in Film, Video, New Media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Mira’s writings were published in The Book of Na in 2022 by Wendy’s Subway, and their work has been covered in Artforum, Art in America, Bomb, Flash Art, Frieze and The New York Times.

Yee Eun Nam – Department of Drama

Yee Eun Nam is a visual artist and a theatre designer for live performances and digital media. She was born and raised in Seoul, Korea where she studied painting, sculpture,  video design, and metal craft.

Recent projects include X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X (Metropolitan Opera); Yellow Face (Broadway, Roundabout Theatre Company); Mountain Top (Geffen Playhouse); Twilight 1992 (CTG); A Transparent Musical (CTG); ONCE UPON A (korean) TIME (Ma-Yi Theater Company); Long Day's Journey into Night (Audible Theater).

Opera/Music projects include Metropolitan Opera, Detroit Opera, Opera Omaha, LA Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Saint Louis, Kennedy Center, San Francisco Symphony, REDCAT, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, New World Center, and The Soraya. Theatre projects include Roundabout Theatre Company, Audible Theatre, Ma-Yi Theater Company, The Classical Theatre of Harlem, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Goodman Theatre, Mark Taper Forum (CTG), A.C.T, South Coast Rep, Pasadena Playhouse, Geffen Playhouse, The Movement Theatre Company, Kansas City Rep, Deaf West Theatre, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Getty Villa, Latino Theater Company and many more.  She also has designed visuals for the Gala with CTG, SFS Luna New Year, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

Yee Eun received two Lucille Lortel Awards nominations for her works on Long Day’s Journey into Night in 2022 and ONCE UPON A (korean) TIME in 2023 and is a winner of LADCC Theatrical Excellence for CGI/Video in 2023 for Twilight 1992 and in 2020 for Mother of Henry. She founded an experimental visual design studio PIGMENT DESIGN LAB in 2022. She is a member of United Scenic Artists, Local 829 and holds an M.F.A. in theater design at UCLA and a B.F.A. in design and metal craft at Seoul National University (SNU) in Seoul, Korea.     

E.Macias – Department of Dance

E.Macias is an assistant professor in the Department of Dance. Her research examines the history and contemporary practice of the Native American Fancy Shawl as a site of gender-expansive being and resistance. Prior to her appointment at UC Irvine, Macias was the Helaine B. Allen and Cynthia L. Berenson Distinguished Visiting Professor of Indigenous Genders and Sexualities through the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality studies at Brandeis University (2021-2024). In previous years, her academic studies were supported by the UC Riverside Dance Department Dissertation Year Program (DYP) Award, the U.S. Department of Education Native American Studies Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) Fellowship and the Eugene-Cota Robles (ECR) Award. Macias has presented dance research for the International Blackfoot Research Conference (2021-2024), the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association conference (2023), the Gender & Sexuality Symposium at Brandeis University (2022) and the Dance Studies Association conference (2022 & 2021).

In July 2024, Macias participated in the Indigenous World Dance Residency at BANFF under the guidance of Santee Smith and Alejandro Ronceria. While at BANFF, Macias presented an early iteration of original dance work and advanced her research project of developing a movement practice guided by Siksikaitsitapi ways of knowing. From 2023-2024, she organized a series of community gatherings where she presented dance work alongside guest artist Daystar Rosalie Jones. Macias has shared work and facilitated dance experiences for several events and communities including: the 27th Annual Drawing Show Yušká Uncoil at Boston Center for the Arts (2024), the Mark Morris Dance Center Shared Space Program (2024), Harvard Dance Center (2024), Ohketeau Cultural Center (2024), Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts (2024), Indigenous Peoples Day at Brandeis (2022-2023), Brandeis Queer Academics and Activism program (2022 & 2023).

Macias holds a Ph.D in Critical Dance Studies from the University of California Riverside, and B.F.A. in Dance with a Modern emphasis from Utah Valley University.