Performing Arts, 2013
Anchorage
Allison Warden is an Inupiaq performance artist and rapper, whose passion is helping young people explore their own culture… and find their voices and their place in the world. She doesn’t pretend to speak for all Inupiaq – she says they’re not all as weird as she is. Allison raps under the name AKU-MATU. She teaches, performs, writes and raps all over Alaska.
Her one-woman show, “Ode to the Polar Bear” has traveled extensively throughout Alaska and has been re-worked into a longer show, “Calling All Polar Bears”, which debuted in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2011.
In 2012, she received a Rasmuson Individual Artist award for performance art and became an “On Our Radar” artist for Creative Capital. She works with youth as an Artist in the Schools for the Alaska State Council of the Arts and loves empowering youth to find their creative voice through theatre and music. In 2014, she won the Governor’s Award for the Humanities.