Aya Rodriguez-Izumi is an artist living and working in Harlem whose practice includes sculpture, music, installation and performance. Her work deals with how communication informs enculturation and molds the understanding of the self. She approaches this theme often in a satirical manner and calls on personal experiences of grappling with her own cultural identity. She has spent her life moving back and forth between New York City and her birthplace of Okinawa, Japan. Being half Cuban/Puerto Rican and Okinawan/Japanese, socio-cultural identity has always been a focus of her work and life. Since graduating from Parsons the New School for Design she has been included in various group shows and has shown at such venues as MoCADA, The Knockdown Center, Free Candy and FLUX Art Fair among others. She is currently an MFA candidate at SVA.
