Human Rights Art Festival Presentation: Nüshu

Human Rights Art Festival Presentation: Nüshu

September, 2026

New York, NY

Valkyrie Yao will present Nüshu as part of a forthcoming Human Rights Art Festival program. Nüshu is a solo performance project drawn from the women’s script historically carried through writing, embroidery, song, and sworn sisterhood in Hunan, China. Centered on one female performer and an extremely long braid attached to the body, the work considers hair as inheritance, discipline, ornament, burden, and record.

Presented within the context of human rights and public witnessing, the project approaches feminine cultural memory as something held in the body before it becomes public language. The work continues Yao’s research into embodied archive, gendered inheritance, and the movement of private histories into performance.