Cuerpxs en Resonancia: Physical Body — Release, Repair + Trace

Cuerpxs en Resonancia is a three-part, bilingual movement-and-sound workshop curated by MexFest Co-Directors Arantxa Araujo + Xtian Ávila.
About this Event

Cuerpxs en Resonancia: Physical Body — Release, Repair, and Trace
Artists: Martita Abril & Lolo Ostia

The first offering centers the physical body as a site of memory, resilience, and transformation. Through movement based practices facilitated in both English and Spanish, participants are invited to release tension, cultivate embodied awareness, and reconnect with themselves and one another through collective movement and care.

The experience concludes with a collaborative visual art process in which participants leave hand imprints in clay (barro). These impressions form a shared archive of presence, honoring the hands that labor, nurture, create, and sustain our communities. Together, movement and clay become complementary acts of remembering—revealing the body not only as something that moves through the world, but as something that leaves an imprint upon it.

ABOUT
Cuerpxs en Resonancia is a three-part bilingual series of participatory performances, communal rituals, workshops, and artistic offerings organized by MexFest, curated by Arantxa Araujo and Xtian Ávila, and hosted at Socrates Sculpture Park during Hispanic Heritage Month.

The series intentionally pairs Mexican artists with artists from across the Latinx diaspora, creating interdisciplinary collaborations that generate new artistic relationships, shared methodologies, and spaces for cross-cultural dialogue. Together, the three offerings explore the physical, cognitive, and energetic dimensions of the body through movement, sound, storytelling, visual art, and collective care.

Cuerpxs en Resonancia welcomes immigrant communities, essential workers, hospitality, kitchen and delivery workers, artists, cultural workers, families, and neighbors into a shared space of creativity and care. Through free bilingual artistic offerings, the series celebrates the wisdom carried by our bodies while creating opportunities to build relationships across cultures, generations, and disciplines.

Together, we transform public space into a place where belonging is practiced, culture is shared, and community is created through participation.

MexFest is an artist-led platform for multidisciplinary artistic exchange, cultural visibility, and community care. Founded by Xtian Ávila in 2023, MexFest was created to center Mexican artists, culture, and traditions while fostering meaningful dialogue with the broader Latinx diaspora.

In 2025, Arantxa Araujo joined as Co-Artistic Director expanding the initiative into a collaborative platform that commissions and presents participatory performances, exhibitions, workshops, and public programs rooted in experimentation, cultural memory, and collective care.

Rather than presenting Mexican culture as a fixed identity, MexFest embraces it as a living, evolving practice—one that invites collaboration across disciplines, generations, and Latinx diaspora. MexFest cultivates new artistic relationships, cross-cultural exchange, and shared methodologies that honor tradition while generating new forms of collective creation.

BIOS
is a performer, choreographer, and teaching artist who grew up on the Tijuana–San Diego border. Her movement-based practice explores the body as a site of memory, relationship, and transformation, drawing from improvisation, somatic research, and interdisciplinary collaboration. She has worked with artists and companies throughout Mexico, the United States, and Ecuador, including Lux Boreal Danza Contemporánea, Will Rawls, Yanira Castro, Daria Fain, Cori Olinghouse, Allyson Green Dance, Peter Terezakis, Khosro Adibi, Rebecca Davis, and Mina Nishimura. Her work has been presented at HERE Arts Center, Movement Research at Judson Church, New York Live Arts, Performance Mix Festival, Dance New Amsterdam, and numerous festivals and site-specific projects across Mexico, Ecuador, and New York, where she continues to create performances, teach, and foster embodied practices rooted in curiosity, connection, and collective care.

is a queer Mexican transdisciplinary artist, curator, and cultural organizer whose practice centers performance while expanding into video, installation, photography, sculpture, and participatory systems. Influenced by neuroscience, somatic practice, and social choreography, Araujo creates multisensory environments where movement, sound, light, and collective participation converge to explore migration, perception, memory, and alternative forms of social connection.

Their work has been presented at the Brooklyn Museum, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Queens Museum, Abrons Arts Center, and internationally through festivals including Illuminus (Boston) and Nuit Blanche (Canada). A recipient of the Franklin Furnace Fund and other awards, Araujo is currently developing a new commissioned work with Franklin Furnace and ISSUE Project Room, premiering on September 23, 2026. They serve as Program Manager at the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, are Co-Artistic Director of MexFest, and Curator of Art in Odd Places 2026: UTOPIAS, where they continue to champion experimental, interdisciplinary, and community-centered artistic practices.

is a Mexican-born curator, theatermaker, teaching artist, and cultural producer whose practice creates spaces for artistic exchange, cultural visibility, and community building. His work spans theater, curation, and public programming, centering Mexican culture while fostering dialogue with the broader Latinx community. His 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 and Co-Artistic Director of MexFest, an artist-led platform that commissions and presents multidisciplinary programs rooted in collective care, experimentation, and cultural exchange. Ávila has collaborated with Flushing Town Hall, The Public Theater, The Clemente Center's Historias initiative, and The Tank NYC. A Drama League Fellow, yoga instructor, and board member of the Gay Latino Collective, he remains committed to employing the arts as a catalyst for connection, belonging, and social impact.

Lolo Ostia is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans site-specific installation, sculpture, and living media. Working with materials such as algae, bacterial cellulose, light, and upcycled matter, she explores biological transformation as a site of collaboration, memory, and ecological connection, creating immersive works that balance decay with resilience. Through processes of cultivation, biodegradation, and material collaboration, Ostia investigates the relationship between the body, biotechnology, and the built environment, making visible the unseen systems we carry and the spaces we inhabit. She is a recipient of various prestigious grants and fellowships, including the inaugural Marco Castro Cosío Media, Art, and Technology Fellowship from Columbia University’s Brown Institute and a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Her work has been exhibited internationally.