Yiru Chen (陳伊如)
she/her/她/伊
Filmmaker, Artist, Educator.
Born in Shanghai, China.
Lives & works in New York,NY
She/Her
In 2019, Yiru graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where she majored in Film and Television production. In addition to her major, she pursued two minors in Psychology and American Sign Language. Yiru furthered her education by obtaining a Master of Arts degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, specializing in Deaf and Hard of Hearing Education. Her dedication to the Deaf community is evident in her role as a current classroom teacher at St. Francis de Sales School for the Deaf in Brooklyn. She is an active member of both the Shanghai and New York signing communities, where she advocates passionately for sign language education and accessible, inclusive arts.
Yiru's approach blends artistic experimentation with critical pedagogy. Poetic and thought-provoking, she crafts stories and systems that center on multilingual access, diaspora identity, and community power. Yiru's thesis short film "Handscape" has been selected for more than 20 international film festivals including the Seattle Deaf Film Festival, and won the Grand Jury Prize at Shanghai Queer International Film Festival. She has interned at HERE Arts Center as a programming assistant. She has also worked for the award-winning documentary director, Stephanie Black, as her personal assistant. Her first feature-length documentary film, "No Rule Is Our Rule", edited and directed along with performance artists and filmmakers Eiko Otake and Wen Hui, has won Best Feature Documentary at the Japan International Film Festival and had its NYC premiere at Asia Society in 2023. She directed the Case Study Film for DEPT and Nvidia's AI Platform "SIGNS" in March 2025.
陳伊如，電影導演，聋重聽特殊教育工作者。出生於中國上海，居於紐約。2019年，伊如畢業於紐約大學帝勢藝術學院，主修電影製作，輔修心理學和美國手語。她繼續深造，獲得了哥倫比亞大學師範學院的碩士學位，專攻聾重聽人特殊教育。目前，伊如在聖弗朗西斯聾人學校擔任教職。她是上海和紐約手語社群的積極份子，長期致力於服務聾人社群，積極推動手語教育和無障礙藝術的發展。
伊如的創作融合了藝術實驗與強調社會意識的教學方法。她的作品富有詩意，發人深省，致力於構建以語言多樣性，海外華人身份認同，與社群力量為核心的敘事與系統。她的上海手語短片《夏青》入围西雅圖聾人電影節等20余国际电影节，並榮獲上海酷兒國際電影節評審團大獎。她曾於 HERE Arts Center 擔任節目助理實習生，亦曾為紀錄片導演 Stephanie Black 擔任個人助理。。她与日籍表演艺术家尾竹永子和中国舞蹈家导演文慧的合作纪录片《没有规则是我们的规则》榮獲日本國際電影節之最佳紀錄長片，並於2023年在亞洲協會進行了紐約首映。2025年3月,她為DEPT和英偉達的合作人工智能平台“SIGNS”執導拍攝了案例研究影片。