Cherrie Yu was born in Xi’an, China in 1995. She has been living and working in the US since 2013.
She works in choreography, moving images, writing, drawing and installation. She received a BA in English from the College of William and Mary in 2017, an an MFA in performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019.
She has been an artist in residence at Macdowell, the Fine Arts Work Center, Anderson Center at Tower View, Yaddo, McColl Center, and the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program. She was an awardee of the Kala Art Institute Media Award Fellowship in 2022, a 2024 Movement Research Van Lier Emerging Artist of Color Fellow, and included in Cultured Mag 2025 Young Artists List. Her films and performances have shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Prismatic Ground Film Festival, Movement Research at Judson Church, Stove Works, Gallery 400, Pageant, Contemporary Calgary Museum, Roman Susan Gallery and more. She has been a visiting artist at Emory University’s anthropology department in 2020, and a visiting teaching artist at the dance and visual art department at UNC Charlotte. Currently she is preparing for a world premiere of a performance at the Playhouse Theatre at the Abrons Art Center in Nov 2026.