Cinthya Santos Briones

Join artist Cinthya Santos Briones for a discussion on Living in Sanctuary (2018–2024), which documents the everyday lives of families and individuals seeking refuge within churches, asylums, and religious institutions across New York, New Mexico, and the US-Mexico border. She will discuss how artists’ and activists’ archives can resist the systemic erasure of undocumented children and families, and her ongoing research at the border.

Cinthya Santos Briones (b. 1983, Mexico) is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural worker of Nahua Indigenous heritage based in New York. She currently serves as faculty in the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and the Mexican Studies Institute, and has been a guest artist at Columbia University and Rutgers University. Her photography and writing have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Vogue, Open Society Foundations, BuzzFeed, The Intercept, The New Yorker, and The Nation, among others. She is co-author of The Indigenous Worldview and Its Representations in Textiles of the Nahua Community of Santa Ana Tzacuala, Hidalgo, and co-creator of the documentary The Huichapan Codex.