Sonia Guiñansaca 2017-2018 Artist in Residence

Sonia Guiñansaca is a Queer Migrant Poet, Cultural Organizer, and Activist from Harlem by way of Ecuador. Guiñansaca is a VONA/Voices alumni who has performed at El Museo Del Barrio, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, NY Poetry Festival, Galeria de La Raza, and has been featured on NBC, PBS, Latina Magazine, Pen American, and the Poetry Foundation, to name a few. She has presented keynotes, workshops, panels at universities throughout the country. She has been named as 1 of 10 Up and Coming Latinx Poets You Need to Know by Remezcla, as well as one of 13 Coolest Queers on the Internet by Teen Vogue, and recently she was announced as a 2017 Artist in Residency at NYU's Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics.

She has emerged as a national leader in the undocumented/migrant artistic and political communities. In 2007, Guiñansaca came out publicly as an undocumented immigrant. Since then she has co-founded and help build some of the largest undocumented organizations in the country, coordinating and participating in groundbreaking civil disobedience actions in the immigrant rights movement. She has also founded some of the first creative artistic projects by and for undocumented writers/artists. Currently she is working on her full length poetry manuscript on migration, queerness, and her change in immigration status from undocumented to documented. She is the Managing Director of CultureStrike.

www.soniaguinansaca.com

Watch "Re-imagining Existence: Migrant Artists in Conversation — curated and moderated by Hemi Artist in Residence Sonia Guiñansaca (2018)"

Watch Sonia Guiñansaca's Artist Talk, "Me Quedo: A Reading of #PapiFemme & #NostalgiaAndBorders" (2018)

Land Acknowledgement

The Hemispheric Institute at New York University acknowledges with respect the Lenape nation, whose traditional homelands NYU now occupies. We recognize the longstanding significance of these territories for Lenape nations past and present. We acknowledge that we work in a city with the largest urban Native population in the United States. Even as we work to increase the historical awareness of Indigenous exclusion and erasure, we acknowledge the effect of that legacy in educational institutions, at NYU, and across the hemisphere. We are committed to work revealing Indigenous history and life-worlds and to the inclusion of Indigenous voices and participation, in allyship with Indigenous makers and communities across the Americas.

About Us

The Hemispheric Institute gathers artists, scholars, writers, learners, and activists from across the Americas. We focus on social justice and research politically engaged culture and performance. We share this work in digital archives and amplify it through dialogues and public scholarship, residencies, publications, and gatherings. Our dynamic, multilingual network traverses disciplines and borders and is grounded in the fundamental belief that artistic practice and critical reflection can spark lasting cultural change.