Nicolás co-presenting with Healing Circles at Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ Foundation series:

Registration opens Monday, April 4th, 2022

Sessions: Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 11:00 AM–Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 12:30 PM EDT

Inspired by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ many lectures and articles, as well as her books,Life Lessons(2000), andOn Grief and Grieving(2005).

“We need time to move through the pain of loss. We need to step into it, really to get to know it, in order to learn.”

“Grief is not just a series of events, stages, or timelines. Our society places enormous pressure on us to get over loss, to get through grief. But how long do you grieve for a husband of fifty years, a teenager killed in a car accident, a four-year-old child: a year? Five years? Forever? The loss happens in time, in fact in a moment, but its aftermath lasts a lifetime.”

- Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

When we come to terms with loss as part of our human existence, the natural grief response guides us through a process of making meaning, finding a deeper purpose, and growing through our human experience. Because the impact of loss and our healing through grief is evolutionary and ongoing, it is greatly supportive to have access to a variety of approaches to sustain us through a lifetime of growth and transformation.

With the guidance and inspiration from Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ far-reaching, comprehensive, and thought-provoking legacy, we learn from experts in the fields of grief and end-of-life to acknowledge and connect with innovative perspectives and creative approaches that embrace loss as an integral part of life and support growth and healing through grief.

TOPICS INCLUDE: Cognitive, somatic, metabolization, externalization, cleansing, psychedelics, meditation, breathwork, art, sound & music, animals, writing/journaling, poetry, and more.

CLASS FORMAT:8 live Zoom sessions, recorded for replay. Participants will receive links to the recordings within 5 days of each live session. $85USD includes all 8 sessions and access to recordings.

TEACHING DYNAMICS INCLUDE:lecture, practice, workshop, conversation, ritual, experiential, and others.

To register click HERE

To learn more about the Elisabeth Kübler Ross Foundation click HERE

To access the archives click HERE

'Dominican Artists in the United States' is a digital project of the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute at The City College of New York devoted to disseminating the work of artists of Dominican descent living in the United States. This particular collection focuses on the artist Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful, whose works gain permanence through audios, photographs, props, drawings, rumors, embodied memories, costumes, websites, videos and publications.

Special thanks to Sarah Aponte, Hiroko Suda, Ching Jung Chen, and Jhensen Ortiz

To learn more about the Dominican Studies Institute click HERE

To access all collections click HERE 

 BACK STAGES by Shannon Jackson discusses C Room in Chapter 13: “Nicolás's work provides a safe space to air fears, taboos, and memories, positioning the vernacular not only as object of study but also as method of study. C Room offers a flexible space in which to experiment with their reenactment, delicately reviving a performance archive that needs care and protection to live at all.” 

Shannon Jackson explores a range of disciplinary, institutional, and political puzzles that engage the social and aesthetic practice of performance in this collection of twenty essential essays spanning her career. Back Stages starts by considering the historical connection between performance practice and movements of social reform, while later writings analyze disciplinary debates on the place of performance in higher education and within the contemporary field of socially engaged art, tracking fraught and allied relationships to literary studies, art history, visual culture, theater, social theory.

To oder book click HERE

Published by Northwestern University Press

Image depicting Usumat, the monkey nawal of artists and creativity (from a series of five posters), crafted by Frida Larios, indigenous artist for Office Hours, and for which she visually interpreted  questions from Nicolás to El Museo del Barrio's staff. The series was installed/exhibited at El Museo del Barrio's offices in 2014

About Office Hours: 

Office Hours (OH) comprises a series of actions spread throughout El Museo del Barrio’s facilities, for which Nicolás Dumit Estévez invites the various departments of the organization to operate on a horizontal level within its own exhibition space. Estévez works with El Museo del Barrio’s employees to co-generate proposals for interventions, workshops, and celebrations, through which both staff and visitors can come together to experience the museum from each other’s perspectives and hence to re-shape its day-to-day as a collaborative endeavor.

 To learn More about Frida Larios: website / IG

 www.condeduquemadrid.es

South Room / February 28 to April 28 / Tuesday to Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. /Sundays and holidays from 10:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. / Closed Monday

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the city of Madrid has experienced a transformation of its public space, a gradual change whose implications have gone unnoticed by many of its citizens.

The appearance of urban art and its consolidation in certain Madrid neighborhoods raise the hypothesis of a possible improvement or regeneration of the city through small ephemeral interventions.

The objective of the exhibition Arte en la calle. Madrid 2000-2018 is to make known a partially unknown Madrid cultural heritage , and contextualize it within the urban landscape of the city.

The exhibition aims to recognize the contribution that, since the beginning of the 21st century, numerous artists have made to the city of Madrid, intervening with actions and leaving more or less obvious traces in its streets.

The information produced reflects the importance of the interventions in the city, in its space and its architecture. For the first time it is possible to recognize the patterns that link each of the works with the place where they were carried out, understand the intensity of the actions and their presence in the neighborhoods through the relationships between technique, dimension, situation, visibility and architectural support.

Madrid is an excellent model to illustrate the transformations of the city and the role played by ephemeral artistic interventions, which respond to different modes of production and intentions.

The enormous proliferation of spontaneous art in the streets of Madrid reveals the presence of an active group of artists who use the city for their explorations of space, communication, and relationships with the public.

With the exhibition Art in the street. Madrid 2000-2018 demonstrates the transformative capacity of urban art and makes visible a high-quality artistic heritage with important implications for the future of the city.

A series of online gatherings centered around the pelvis with a diverse roster of practitioners ranging from dance, somatic practice to breathwork. Hosted by The Interior Beauty Salon and Priscilla Marrero. This program will run January-June 2022, on the last Thursday of each month. Join us as we shake, educate, and shine together!   

RSVP HERE

All sessions are free and open to the public upon RSVPing. Any donations collected will go directly to support La Pelvis Project. 

This series is made possible with the support of the Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts, The Interior Beauty Salon, and the University of California Riverside Dance Department.  

FIRST SESSION: Thursday, January 27, 2022, 6:00PM-7:30PM EST / 3:00PM-4:30PM PST 

More sessions: Thursday, February 24th, 2022 / Thursday, March 31, 2022 / Thursday, April 28th, 2022 / Thursday, May 26th, 2022 / Thursday, June 30th, 2022 

With Jessica Garet from Aire Healing : In this session, Jessica will discuss how our body, especially our pelvis, holds the potential for our greatest creativity and connection to our vitality and authentic expression. She will invite and guide us in exploring how breath can help us to uncover energetic blocks stored in our body and use the body’s wisdom to access increased sensations of safety and a return to feeling a deeper sense of belonging. The intention is that if the body and spirit can remember their innate gifts of safety, connection, pleasure, and expansion then the energy of trauma, loss, grief, and pain will have a greater ability to flow and be liberated.  

Jessica Garet (she/her) is a licensed clinical social worker specializing in body/spirit-based experiential practices for healing including breathwork and somatic/sensation-based inquiry.  As an arts enthusiast and vocalist, Jessica has a particular interest in working with creative professionals, helping them to navigate creative energetic blocks and nurture their inner voice.  She has been holding space for healing since 2006 and presently offers individual and group work online only.  

Priscilla Marrero (ella/she) is an experimental performing + teaching artista from sunny Seminole, Taíno and Tequesta land, also known as Miami, Florida. She is a passionate storyteller and loves to discover new ways to collaborate with interdisciplinary artistas through live performance or filmmaking. She has performed and presented her collaborations in the Musée Dapper (Paris, FR), The Empty Circle (Brooklyn, NY), Miami Light Project (Miami, FL), Inkub8 (Miami, FL), Movement Research at Judson Memorial Church (New York, NY) y más. Priscilla has received support from grants such as Artist Access Grant, Miami-Dade Community Grants, Here and Now Grant, and Gluck Fellowship Grant, MFA Graduate Fellowship, and currently the Chancellor's Distinguished Fellowship Award. She graduated from Florida International University with a BA in Performance and Choreography (09) and is currently an MFA Candidate for Experimental Choreography from the University of California Riverside (22) for her research practice on La Pelvis. Priscilla lives and works on/with Munsee Lenape land, known as Harlem, NY, and often travels to Miami Beach for el mar and some familia time. 

Priscilla Marrero related links: website / IG / Vimeo

The Salon will also be launching a Q&I with Priscilla and Nicolás in November 2021

Priscilla Marrero (ella/she) is an experimental performing + teaching artista from sunny Seminole, Taíno and Tequesta land, also known as Miami, Florida. She is a passionate storyteller and loves to discover new ways to collaborate with interdisciplinary artistas through live performance or filmmaking. She has performed and presented her collaborations in the Musée Dapper (Paris, FR), The Empty Circle (Brooklyn, NY), Miami Light Project (Miami, FL), Inkub8 (Miami, FL), Movement Research at Judson Memorial Church (New York, NY) y más. Priscilla has received support from grants such as Artist Access Grant, Miami-Dade Community Grants, Here and Now Grant, and Gluck Fellowship Grant, MFA Graduate Fellowship, and currently the Chancellor's Distinguished Fellowship Award. She graduated from Florida International University with a BA in Performance and Choreography (09) and is currently an MFA Candidate for Experimental Choreography from the University of California Riverside (22) for her research practice on La Pelvis. Priscilla lives and works on/with Munsee Lenape land, known as Harlem, NY, and often travels to Miami Beach for el mar and some familia time. 

Priscilla Marrero related links: website / IG / Vimeo

Lisette Morel is a New Jersey based Dominican-American artist, mother and educator, born in New York City. She initiated her career as a painter, and her practice has broadened to include installation/site-specific works, assemblage and performance. She embraces these as organic extensions of her body, which help her navigate, question, blur and challenge set boundaries within systems. Most recently, Lisette has been known to perform with her daughters, friends and neighbors in recurring endurance collaborations. Some of these include Run to Your Friend Until You Can’t Anymore, with performance artist Ayana Evans. In this action for Korean Art Forum they run to one another for 2-3 hours, celebrating and exploiting the strength and vulnerability of their friendship. Lisette has also created her own performances, where she utilizes found objects to mark given spaces. One of these performances includes Raw Forms Forum, curated by artist Dominique Duroseau, Newark Museum, NJ. In the Winter of 2021, she performed And You Do What They Tell Ya; And You Eat What They Tell Ya, inspired by the infamous band Rage Against The Machine. In the Winter of 2020 Morel invited neighbors to draw in the snow-covered street with mops and brooms. Her large-scale installations have been included in exhibitions with the Neo-Latino Collective group exhibit Critical Mass, Monmouth Museum, NJ. She has exhibited as well as part of the I Kan Do Dat exhibit, curated by Daniel Simmons and Oshune Layne, Skylight Gallery Brooklyn, NY. Her first solo exhibition Places You Aren’t Supposed To Go: (Don’t Play Me) Do We Still Call It Abstract Art? premiered at Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ.  Awards and residencies include the First Sustainable Arts Fellow Residency, Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ, 2016; and an artist residency at Soho20 Chelsea Gallery, NY, 2012. She participated in Aljira’s Emerge10 Program and at El Museo del Barrio Fifth Biennial: The (S) Files. Lisette is a recipient of the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant. She received her Master in Fine Arts at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University and her Bachelor of Arts at Rutgers University.

Lisette Morel / Related links: website / Instagram / review

I thank you, Elizabeth Ridley, for introducing me to this powerful poem that speaks so much to me here and now at this very moment

Last week I graduated from The Interdependence Project as a Mindfulness Meditation Teacher. I thank each one of my teachers, my classmates and the anonymous angel-donor who made it possible for me to attend this yearlong program. May you always be blessed.

To learn more about The Interdependence Project (IDP) click HERE

For more information as to how to train as a meditation teacher with IDP click HERE

BY LUCILLE CLIFTON

won't you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

A FREE Online Gathering Over Two Days  “Youth Mental Wellness - Resilience in Uncertainty” / October 7 and 8, 2021 

For more details about the conference click HERE

To register click HERE

About In My Mind Conference 2021 : Our 2021 conference continues as a FREE virtual gathering with a potentially larger participation - many from previous conferences and first timers - WELCOME! As a participant, you are likely to meet others from around the world, the country and your neighborhood/community from the comfort of your home. 

Recognizing the limitations imposed on us by the continuing pandemic and the fatigue many experience from too much online/screen time, this year’s Conference will span two days - truncated each day. It will be primarily led by our young LGBTQ+ people of color community members, who will share with us their view of the present and their thoughts for the future. Subject areas will raise and discuss issues focused on LGBTQ+ people of color mental health - “In My Mind.”  

The conference hones in on issues impacting mental health, such as foster care, homelessness and shelter system, incarceration, physical health, substance abuse and recovery, transgender issues, sexual health, cultural sensitivity and acceptance (sexual orientation and gender identity), HIV, COVID-19, racism, homophobia and transphobia, education, coping with isolation, social media, external environmental factors, and much more.