Cuerpxs en Resonancia: Physical Body — Release, Repair + Trace
About this Event
Cuerpxs en Resonancia: Physical Body — Release, Repair, and Trace
Participants are invited to engage with artist facilitators: Martita Abril & Gabriel García Román in a gentle, bilingual movement-based workshop centered on the physical body—using full-body movement as a form of release, restoration, and care. Through guided exercises, the session supports participants in reconnecting with their bodies and easing accumulated strain. It will also include a visual, hands-on component where participants contribute to a shared artwork using their hands, recognizing the hand as an archive, tool, and storyteller of working lives, histories, and contributions.
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
Performer, choreographer and teaching artist grew up in the border of Tijuana and San Diego CA. She has worked with dance artists and companies throughout México, the U.S. and Ecuador, including a number of projects and performances with Lux Boreal Danza Contemporánea, Allyson Green Dance, Peter Terezakis, Khosro Adibi, Cristina Baquerizo, the Indie Ballet Collaborative, Will Rawls, Rebecca Davis, a canary torsi by Yanira Castro and Mina Nishimura. Currently she is working with Daria Fain and Cori Olinghouse. Her work has been presented by HERE Arts Center, Movement Research at Judson Church, New York Live Arts (NYLA), NY Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), The Lumen Dance Festival, Performance Mix, Dance New Amsterdam (DNA), Local Produce Festival, The Ground Plan Arts Festival,The Fête De L’Hurricane at Red Bean Studios. At the Open Performance for Movement Research, multiple site-specifics in Mexico, NYC and Brooklyn, in Ecuador and at The Indie Ballet Sessions with the New York Restoration Project, where she taught a children’s movement workshop, and was featured in the New York Times.
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.
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.
was born in Zacatecas, Mexico and raised in Chicago. He received his B.A. from The City College of New York where he studied Studio Art.His art has been acquired by the International Center of Photography and Museum of Contemporary Religious Art. It has been shown at the Museum of Latin American Art (Long Beach, CA), Cathedral of St. John the Divine (New York, NY), the Center for Photography at Woodstock (Woodstock, NY), and numerous other institutions and galleries.
In 2019 he was commissioned by the Leslie-Lohman Museum to bring his Queer Icons series into the streets for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots where 100 Queer Icons flags were marched down the World Pride route. In 2022 he was one of 7 Latinx artists to collaborate with Target for Latinx Heritage Month. He currently has a solo exhibition at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 0.00 to USD 10.00
