RESEARCH
“THE SCHOOL OF BODY-TERRITOY”: RE-STORYING
NARRATIVES OF EXTRACTION IN THE PERUVIAN AMAZON
A research-creation project exploring ways to challenge the deep-rooted dominance of resource extraction in how we understand and relate to the world. It brings attention to the often-overlooked violence of extractivism, and the control this exerts over feminized people and women’s bodies.
As part of this work, La Escuela de las Chullachaquis was created: a community-based initiative that used arts-based methods to open space for participants to imagine and embody alternatives to extractive ways of being.
PAST RESEARCH
GENDER, MIGRATION AND NEWCOMER ARTISTS IN TORONTO
The art world is grounded in the gendered and undervalued work of social reproduction. Thus, the high female presence in the newcomer arts scene is not circumstantial but a common trait of an increasingly gendered art world.
Drawing from dialectical historical materialist anti-racist Marxist-feminism and existing literature, this research explored the conditions in which newcomer female artists come to engage with the Toronto art world, and how do their experiences are imbricated by the power relations that constitute a gendered society. Through interviews with eight cis-women who identified as newcomer artists, I present a description of their intersecting experiences across gender, racial hierarchies and capitalist social relations embedded in the Toronto art world.
Research collaborations
PEDAGOGIES OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT (2022-2025)
The Pedagogies of Community Engagement partnership gathers community-engaged (CE) facilitators and academic researchers committed to confronting racism, colonialism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination in their community-based facilitation and research practices.
The project explores facilitation as a cornerstone of community engagement and its crucial role for bringing together communities impacted by social and environmental injustice.
BEYOND THE TOOLKIT: COMMUNITY-ENGAGEMENT IN COVID-19 (2021-2022)
Part of the research team led by Dr. Sarah Switzer explored how community-engaged practitioners adapted their participatory work to online and remote settings, as a result of COVID-19, and the unique ethical and pedagogical challenges that arose.
Besides data collection, I developed illustrated resources that guided the team through the data analysis process. Thinking with the concept of orientation (Ahmed, 2006), we situated drawing as a mode of process-oriented data analysis, opening up possibilities for data interpretation and mobilization.
Explore more of the project HERE.
THE PEDAGOGICAL IMPUSE (2019-2023)
The Pedagogical Impulse is a research-creation project led by Dr. Stephanie Springgay. The project resides at the intersections between social practice, knowledge production, pedagogy, and “school.” As a site for artistic-research in art and education, it has initiated a number of experimental, critical, and collaborative projects, such as the “Counter with Care” project and “The Instant Class Kit” and its self-guided workshops.