ROBERT OUYANG RUSLI // OHYUNG
Photo by Jess X. Snow
ROBERT OUYANG RUSLI is an Asian American composer & artist based in Brooklyn, NY. They have written music for dozens of feature and short films premiering at Sundance, SXSW, Los Angeles Film Festival, Curaçao IFFR, BAMCinématek, as well as exhibitions and art projects featured in the Queens Museum and BAM Next Wave Festival. They are the recipient of the 2017-2018 Van Lier Fellowship for Music Composition, and are a 2021 Pioneer Works Music Resident.
They recently scored 2021 Gotham Award-Nominated film Test Pattern, Disney’s The Little Prince(ss), an episode of Hulu's Your Attention Please, as well as the short film Bambirak which won the Best International Fiction Short award at Sundance Film Festival. In July Robert was awarded ASCAP Foundation’s 2021 Jimmy Van Heusen Award for “outstanding, promising composers.”
They produce experimental and political rap music under the name OHYUNG. Their first album Untitled (Chinese Man with Flame) was released by Deathbomb Arc. In 2020, OHYUNG released their sophomore album PROTECTOR (Chinabot), an experimental rap cross-genre collision course through distorted 808s, pitch-shifted rapping, frenetic pop energy, and ambient loops. Featured in PAPER and Kaltblut, PROTECTOR was described by Bandcamp as “a fascinating, shape-shifting record.”
They have performed at Le Poisson Rouge, Roulette, Elsewhere, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY Live Arts x BAM Pride, Trans Pecos, WNYC's The Greene Room, and many other venues around New York City. In 2019 they went on tour in Europe with the Asian diasporic experimental electronic music label Chinabot.