Cuerpxs en Resonancia: Cognitive Body — Repetition to Repair + Story Circle
About this Event
Cuerpxs en Resonancia: Cognitive / Affective Body — Repetition to Repair + Story Circle
The workshop will include a guided immigrant story-writing circle facilitated by artists Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel Atrib & Mónica Palma inviting Latinx participants living in NYC and Queens to write and share short personal narratives of migration, work, care, and resilience through bilingual prompts and facilitation.
ABOUT
Cuerpxs en Resonancia is a three-part, bilingual movement-and-sound workshop series curated by MexFest Co-Artistic Directors Arantxa Araujo and Xtian Ávila during Hispanic Heritage Month. Each session is led by a pair of artists working across different disciplines, coming together to create a space rooted in collective care and embodied exploration. The series welcomes immigrant communities—essential workers, hospitality, kitchen, and delivery workers, artists, and cultural workers—as well as anyone seeking space for rest, reconnection, and release. Each session focuses on a different dimension of embodied experience — physical, cognitive/affective, and energetic — supporting participants in releasing chronic strain, regulating stress, and restoring vitality shaped by repetitive labor.Workshops are free, bilingual (Spanish/English), and open to all. No prior experience required.
MexFest: more than a festival—a movement. MexFest is a collective of NYC artists and cultural workers providing education, inspiration, and support for our community. MexFest continues to contribute to the cultural landscape of New York City, bridging tradition and contemporary artistry through large-scale community engagement. Recent highlights include MexFest 2024 at The Tank, a groundbreaking four-day multidisciplinary festival that showcased the breadth of Mexican creative expression. The momentum carried forward with a deep focus on ancestral honoring, including the 2025 Dia de Muerto: Rituales de Resiliencia (Rituals of Resilience) celebration at Flushing Town Hall and the upcoming 2026 residency at Socrates Sculpture Park. These landmark events stand as powerful gatherings that serve as pillars of cultural preservation and innovation.
BIOS
is a queer Mexican artist whose central axis is performance art, branching into video, photo, installation, and sculpture. Influenced by neuroscience, their multisensory, movement-based work has been presented at the Brooklyn Museum, Leslie-Lohman Museum, Queens Museum, and internationally at Illuminus (Boston) and Nuit Blanche (Canada). Recipient of the Franklin Furnace Fund and other grants, Araujo also co-organizes MexFest 2025 and serves as Program Manager at the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Araujo is Co-Artistic Director of MexFest.
Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel Atrib treads an elusive path that manifests itself through experiences that unfold within the quotidian. He has exhibited/performed at Madrid Abierto/ARCO, The IX Havana Biennial, PERFORMA 05/07/21, IDENSITAT, Prague Quadrennial, Pontevedra Biennial, Queens Museum, MoMA, Printed Matter, P.S. 122, Sculpture Center, BAAD!, Hemispheric Institute, Princeton University, Anthology Film Archives, El Museo del Barrio, Center for Book Arts, The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Franklin Furnace, and LMCC.
Born in Santiago, Dominican Republic, he was baptized as a Bronxite in 2011. He is the Founding Director of The Interior Beauty Salon.
, is a Mexican-born curator, theatremaker, teaching artist, arts administrator, and Drama League Fellow. His recent theatrical credits include Last Christmas (The Tank NYC), The Sun Serpent (Hangar Theatre), and productions of Romeo & Juliet and Twelfth Night (New York Live Arts). He is the founder of MexFest and has recently worked at Flushing Town Hall and The Public Theater, and collaborated with The Clemente Center on their Historias initiative, as well as The Tank NYC, where he curated community-focused festivals and wrote and directed Last Christmas for MexFest's inauguration.
After a foundational career in luxury hospitality management at storied destinations such as The Lowell (NYC) and The Setai (Miami Beach), Xtian now dedicates his professional life to his lifelong passion for the arts.
Deeply committed to service, Xtian is a yoga instructor and a Board Member of the Gay Latino Collective. He has found profound fulfillment working directly with families in Guatemala City through Safe Passage and with indigenous populations through The God’s Child Project. Inspired by the power of the arts to build bridges, he is honored to contribute to the vibrant community at Socrates Sculpture Park. He lives in Harlem with his miniature pinscher, Rico.
is a Mexico City-born artist based in Brooklyn. She holds a BFA from Universidad Veracruzana and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her work has been exhibited at numerous venues, including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Tang Teaching Museum, and various NYC galleries such as Klaus von Nichtssagend and Soloway. A 2022 Artist-in-Residence at UTK, she currently serves as an adjunct lecturer at Lehman College and LaGuardia Community College (CUNY).
Palma’s practice spans objects and performance, utilizing materials like paper, metal, encaustic, tar, and obsidian for their symbolic and structural parallels to the human body. She explores the tension between fragility and pliability, using viscous materials that mirror bodily fluids. By forcing imprints onto materials that resist, she creates objects that appear molded, "damaged, caressed, or bitten." This tactile process serves as a reclamation of her Mexican heritage and a method to make the body unapologetically visible within a space.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 0.00 to USD 10.00
