We are pleased to announce multidisciplinary artist and educator Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel as the 2025–26 SPCUNY Teaching Scholar-in-Residence. A longtime practitioner of socially engaged performance, Nicolás brings a decades-long commitment to art as a catalyst for personal and collective transformation. His work dissolves boundaries between performance, pedagogy, and ritual, centering presence, care, and radical belonging as essential frameworks for social change.
As the Teaching Scholar-in-Residence, Nicolás will lead the Spring 2026 Seminar, mentor Fellows across disciplines, and co-develop programming that bridges the classroom with broader public, cultural ecosystems. His appointment reflects SPCUNY’s mission to advance a justice-centered vision for arts higher education — one that uplifts artists whose practices are grounded in community, collaboration, and the ongoing pursuit of collective liberation.
“Nicolás is an artist with exemplary commitment to long-term, quiet, and deep engagement with communities. As a longtime New Yorker and CUNY alum, he carries a lived understanding of the aspirations and challenges that shape our communities,” Co-Director Chloë Bass said. “We are so excited to welcome him to SPCUNY, bringing his grounded practice to light in a new way and to inspire our Fellows and broader network.”
Nicolás’s practice traverses the in-between spaces where art and everyday life intersect, emerging not through objects but through experiences, gestures, and relationships. Rooted in a deep inquiry into migration, cultural hybridity, and identity, his work is shaped by the layered realities of being Lebanese-Dominican, Dominican York, and a Bronxite, and unfolds through relational encounters and spiritual gestures. His explorations of identity and belonging reflect a commitment to transformation and care, offering a nuanced reckoning with American identity — particularly urgent in a moment when national policies increasingly diverge from the values of justice and collective care.
“Attending the City College of New York in the 1990s, upon emigrating from the Dominican Republic, prepared me as a creative to be in community in places like Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Calaf, Catalonia; and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, among others,” Nicolás shared. “Returning to CUNY as the SPCUNY Teaching Scholar-in-Residence, I am looking forward to supporting a new generation of artists, scholars, and practitioners in different fields who are experimenting with new paradigms for social justice, and proposing caring and compassionate ways of engaging our world.”
Nicolás’s work has been presented at institutions including MoMA, El Museo del Barrio, the Queens Museum, the Havana Biennial, PERFORMA, and Franklin Furnace. With degrees from Temple University, Union Theological Seminary, and City College (CUNY), he was a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow and has held teaching roles at the University of Texas at Austin, Transart Institute for Creative Research, and BAX/EmergeNYC. He is also the founding director of The Interior Beauty Salon, an ongoing endeavor and living organism that explores the intersection of creativity and healing.
In this new position, Nicolás will contribute to shaping SPCUNY’s evolving pedagogical vision, deepening connections to New York City’s cultural landscape, and supporting emerging artists in cultivating practices that are socially responsive and rooted in community.
“Our special Teaching Scholar-in-Residence program has brought socially committed artists and scholars like Natalia Nakazawa and Tom Finkelpearl into transformative dialogue with our Fellows and the wider community,” Co-Director Gregory Sholette said. “Welcoming Nicolás into this legacy feels especially timely — his practice reminds us that care is not peripheral, but foundational to how we imagine and enact justice. At a time when the political landscape poses growing pressures on higher education and the arts, his presence signals a needed commitment to reflection, resilience, and a collective future.”
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