About Me
My name is Yaara Perczek (she/her) and I create music and perform under the name Yaara Valey.
I am a queer artist, compassionate space holder, and healing sound practitioner whose work weaves movement, ritual, and performance arts. My background in movement based expressive arts therapy, somatic exploration, music, and creative facilitation allows me to hold space with tenderness and honesty. Through water, intuition, and relational presence, I create space for people to soften into themselves and be seen in their truth.
I am based in Portland, Oregon. Traditional lands of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Cowlitz, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla, and Bands of Chinook peoples.
I grew up between cultures, languages, and rhythms — raised in a Latin American Jewish family in a home filled with Spanish and Hebrew music and trips to the ocean. My parents are deep appreciators of the arts and curious about alternative ways of caring for the body, so I learned early to trust feeling, intuition, and the quiet intelligence of the nervous system.
Swimming was my first meditation. I grew up swimming in the ocean. The ocean showed me how to feel freedom and safety in my body. As a teenager, I found free form dance — first through ecstatic movement, then through Five Rhythms, and eventually through studying movement based expressive arts therapy at the Tamalpa Institute. That’s where something opened in me, leading me to where I am today. I discovered that performance could be ritual, that the body could speak what words couldn’t, and that art could be a form of healing.
Today, I approach photography the same way I approach dance or sound — as a ritual, an alchemy, a healing space. I believe the practice of allowing ourselves to be seen is healing for the collective. My portrait sessions are creative rituals where all walks of life are welcome back into themselves.
The world I dream of is one where every being can rest, softness is honored as power, and all bodies are seen as whole and sacred.
I am guided by a deeper desire to restore visibility as belonging and reconnect us to the magic in our aliveness.
A portrait session to me is an act of reclamation, a returning to imagination and belonging in the body.
I hold my work as a portrait photographer as a community weaving practice and share the work of the artists and practitioners I work with. I believe we are stronger together and uplifting each other is how we thrive.
The healing arts I bring into my work
Movement based Expressive Arts Therapy
Improvisation & Channeling
Singing & Sound Baths
Somatic Facilitation
Film & Video Art