emi
kuriyama

emi kuriyama (1991–2016) was a writer and poet born and raised in Redondo Beach, California. emi was a prolific writer whose vibrant curiosity led her to produce an expansive body of work that insisted on play and careful collaborations as ways to live. She built her work and world with people, plants, animals, objects, symbols, and currencies. She thought with and through these encounters, and found joy in their interdependencies and connections. Writing gave emi permission to play, to render possible what was not in her lived reality—to twist, push, pull, and tease her experiences into absurdity and magic. For emi, writing was rebellion, as it was resistance and resilience. 

She founded the small press Young Cloud, and was a co-founder of the artist book project baumtest. At UCLA, she studied art history and was the editor-in-chief of the student publication, GRAPHITE, published by the Hammer Museum. She wrote extensively and expansively on art, with an attention to photography and its processes, often for Daily Serving, Complex, Notes on Looking, among others.

emi worked at the Hammer Museum as an educator, and for the artist Matthew Brandt. She was enrolled in the Cal Arts MFA Creative Writing Class of 2017 until her death, and was mentored by Christine Wertheim, Douglas Kearney, and Jen Hofer.

Projects with Candor Arts:

sashiko