Tia Ashley Kushniruk is a Queer Woman of Chinese-Eastern European settler heritage from the Treaty 6 Territory of Edmonton AB. Since 2013 she has been affiliated with the Cirque Du Soleil and is a frequent collaborator of Jake W. Hastey for Toy Guns Dance Theatre (Edmonton). She graduated from The School of Toronto Dance Theatre (STDT) in 2017, receiving the Kathryn Ash Scholarship in 2016.

She has had the pleasure of performing works of Antony Hamilton (DanceMakers, chunkymove), Paul Andre-Fortier, Peggy Baker, Aria Evans, Christopher House (TDT), Shay Kuebler (SK/RSA), Christianne Ullmark, Susie Burpee and Jasmyn Fyffe - touring Nationally across Canada and Internationally to Israel, U.S.A, Colombia, China, and France. Tia’s work has been presented by STDT’s Student Council (Toronto, 2014-2017), Edmonton Dance Theatre’s Dancing in the Park (Edmonton, 2016), Festival Internacional Nomada (El Salvador, 2020) and Dancing on the Edge the.response - Dance Cafe (Vancouver 2020). Tia's illustration and animation work have been commissioned by Plastic Orchid Factory (Vancouver, 2020), Two Big Steps (Vancouver, 2020/2021), Dance made in/fait au Canada (2021) and adelheid (Toronto, 2020). Her research has been supported by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts, since 2014.

Kushniruk collaborated with Christianne Ullmark in the presentation of a solo work for the 2018 Beijing Dance Festival where she subsequently received support and funding from the Canada Arts Council. Her own artistic research plays with varying media - including, stickers, graffiti, short stories, animation, scripts, folklore, video games and clown - to question contemporary Canadian identity in colonized culture.

Link to her site: https://inuashnar1.tumblr.com/