Yoshinojo Fujima (aka Rika Lin) is an interdisciplinary artist, dancemaker, and Grandmaster in Fujima-style Japanese classical dance and is part of the postwar Japanese American diaspora. She has performed her original works and as part of many collaborations at Links Hall, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Pritzker Pavilion, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), where she premiered her full length work Asobi: Playing within Time in 2018. Her works embody her identity and tradition through performance as well as her teaching practice in Japanese classical dance. In 2021 she received the CDF Digital Dance Grant and the CDF Production Residency for her ongoing virtual reality project “Kurokami E{m}Urge, #ChooseYourReality”, which is also nurtured by her time as a Fellow in Residence at High Concept Labs (HCL) (2021-2022), The current iteration in process to be presented as part of her ongoing “Beyond the Box” series as a CoMission Fellow at Links Hall in June 2023. A recipient of a John D. and Susan P. Diekman Fellowship Djerassi Resident Artist (2019), she has also received residencies at Ragdale Foundation (2019) and High Concept Labs (2018), a Links Hall Artistic Associate Curatorial Resident, 3Arts Make a Wave artist, and Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist (2017.)

Yoshinojo’s series “Beyond the Box”, launched in 2017, centers on female performers and creatives. Her own dance investigations alter the traditional pedagogy of Japanese dance with humor and subtle transgressions by way of questioning ideas of role and identity. Her collaborative project, Suji: Lines of Tradition, with the puppet artist Tom Lee, was featured as part of the 2019 Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, Links Hall 40th Anniversary LinkSirkus, as well as her Beyond the Box series. In March 2020 she performed in Kyoto, Japan at UrbanGuild as part of the MushiHime Festival, just before the pandemic came into full force. She is a recent Master Apprentice Ethnic Folk Arts Grant recipient; adapting the pedagogy of traditional Japanese Classical dance with her mentor/teacher as the apprentice, and currently (2023) now as a Master. This June (2023) she is presenting her new works resulting from the Links Hall CoMission Fellowship.