Participatory Book Launch of Where ever I go you Come in Athens

On December 14 I guided some exercises about art as a mourning practice for the launch of Maaike Stutterheim‘s book «Where ever I go you come». Here’s the descriptive text I wrote for the occassion. We thank Juan de Dios Solano for the beautiful design for social media.

WHERE EVER I GO YOU COME by Maaike Stutterheim – A participatory book launch

“One thing we all have in common

We have a mother

When I lost mine I thought I lost the ground beneath my feet”

This is how Maaike’s book begins. More words follow. Accompanied by images, old and new. Her mother, young, at the sea, pregnant, being loved, dead, at a taberna, adult, smiling, in bed.

This book is about her life and her death. This book is a work of mourning translated into art.

We are invited to observe it, talk about mourning, write, think and evoke, together. Then to  talk a bit more and make a toast. The afternoon will be guided by artist and researcher Eliana Otta and Maaike will share with us her process of creating the book.

A flying kiss thrown to the air… At SYN/BIOSES Festival! Un beso volado lanzado al aire en el festival SYN/BIOSES

In November I participated in the experimental literature and performance festival SYN/BIOSES with A flying Kiss Thrown to the Air, A Guided Meditation Guided by a Plant. The festival was organized by the project A Glimpse Of, directed by Dimitra Ioannou, at Oxtó, in Athens. It was great to join the other participating artists in this intense event:

Ioannis Andronikidis
Theo Chiotis
Helen Dimos
David Grundy
Dimitra Ioannou
Eliana Otta
Konstantinos Papacharalampos
Hannah Silva
Erica Scourti
Caterina Stamou
VASKOS (Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis)


En noviembre participé en el festival de literatura experimental y performance SYN/BIOSES con Un beso volador lanzado al aire, una meditación guiada guiada por una planta. El festival fue organizado por el proyecto A Glimpse Of, dirigido por Dimitra Ioannou, en Oxtó, Atenas. Fue genial participar junto a los demás artistas participantes en este intenso evento:

Ioannis Andronikidis
Theo Chiotis
Helen Dimos
David Grundy
Dimitra Ioannou
Eliana Otta
Konstantinos Papacharalampos
Hannah Silva
Erica Scourti
Caterina Stamou
VASKOS (Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis)

PAIN COLLECTIVELY SUNG, JOYS AND TEARS TOGETHER WE HUM / CANTAMOS EL DOLOR COLECTIVAMENTE, TARAREAMOS JUNTAS ALEGRIAS Y LAGRIMAS

On May, I guided the workshop Pain Collectively Sung, Joys and Tears together we Hum, in collaboration with Xanthoula Dakovanou, as part of Healing Exercises: Inherited and (e)merging women’s knowledges for collective learning and interspecies connections, the 2023 public program organized by the collective I belong to, Mouries.

Description of the workshop:

A vocal music therapy workshop focused on the creation of contemporary vocal rituals, based on the ancient tradition of laments, as a way of addressing every-day loss related to the different crises that we traverse (sanitary, ecological, political). 

We’ll consider our different relationships to our voices, their relation to our contexts and their gendered aspects, as departure points to share questions and experiences. The core of the workshop is a weekend dedicated to explore experiences of loss to create our own lamentations, supported by the music therapist and the group. We will do voice exercises, collective readings and discussion, drawing, writing and a closing farewell ritual. 


En mayo, guié el taller Pain Collectively Sung, Joys and Tears together we Hum, en colaboración con Xanthoula Dakovanou, como parte de Healing Exercises: Heredando y (e)fusionando saberes de mujeres para el aprendizaje colectivo y las conexiones interespecies, el programa público 2023 organizado por el colectivo al que pertenezco, Mouries.

Descripción del taller:

Un taller de musicoterapia vocal centrado en la creación de rituales vocales contemporáneos, basados en la antigua tradición de los lamentos, como forma de abordar las pérdidas cotidianas relacionadas con las diferentes crisis que atravesamos (sanitarias, ecológicas, políticas).

Consideraremos nuestras diferentes relaciones con nuestras voces, su relación con nuestros contextos y sus aspectos de género, como puntos de partida para compartir preguntas y experiencias. El núcleo del taller es un fin de semana dedicado a explorar experiencias de pérdida para crear nuestros propios lamentos, con el apoyo del musicoterapeuta y del grupo. Haremos ejercicios de voz, lecturas y debates colectivos, dibujo, escritura y un ritual de despedida final.

Learning from Plants, Rocks and Water: Counter-Narratives from Earthlings Amidst Multiple Crises

A still of my video Offering’s apprentice II used for the poster of our show!

The exhibition Learning from Plants, Rocks and Waters: Counter-Narratives from Earthlings Amid Multiple Crises was inaugurated on Tuesday the 4th at SOHO studios. The show features works of the Peruvian artists Imayna Cáceres, Alfredo Ledesma, Hansel Sato and me and will be on until October 23. Check out the program full of diverse activities!

«The exhibition is the result of a collective experiment, an ongoing collaboration between four artists with similar artistic approaches and a common interest in promoting plural ecological values ​​of coexistence with other beings on earth.

As Peruvian artists living in Vienna, they accompany each other in their migration processes and together imagine stories that could make a world possible in which borders and hierarchies between people, but also between people and nature, have been overcome. The artistic production refers to old mestizo and indigenous practices from the Amazon and Andean regions. In these cultural spaces, people are viewed as an integral part of the natural fabric.»

We are having great press coverage, as shows this article, this article, and the beautiful images taken by Joanna Pianka for Esel.

Picture taken by Joanna Pianka of my piece «An imagined friendship (A spiritual tambito)»
And some other pictures taken by Joanna, including some taken during the guided meditation I made before the opening:

«Carmen I» en Hilos que resisten, hilos que subvierten

Muy contenta de exponer parte de la serie «Carmen», basada en poemas de Carmen Ollé, en la bella exposición curada por Gabriela Germaná en el Centro Cultural del Británico, Lima. En sus palabras:
«A través de esta exposición, se presentarán vestimentas y piezas bidimensionales realizadas con hilos, pero también instalaciones, performances y videos que dan cuenta de los textiles como objetos en constante transformación, en estrecho vínculo con el cuerpo. Son alrededor de 46 piezas de diversos artistas que refieren a actos de afirmación identitaria y resistencia; identidades cambiantes e híbridas, producto de la movilidad; piezas que hablan del valor de los textiles como vehículo político y de protesta; y piezas que reflexionan sobre identidades individuales atravesadas por cuestiones de raza, género y pertenencia.

Artistas: María Abadón, Paloma Álvarez, Lucilda Amasifén, Nereida Apaza, Liliana Ávalos, Ana Teresa Barboza, Clara Best, Nilda Callañaupa Àlvarez y tejedoras de Chincheros, Angie Cienfuegos, Raquel Esquives, Venuca Evanán, Cristina Flores Pescorán, Gonzalo Hernández, Dora Inuma Ramirez, Eliana Otta, Nemiye Pérez Mardini, Robert Orihuela, Antonio Páucar, Harry Pinedo, Ingrid Pumayalla, Violeta Quispe, .Aquilino Ramos, Alionca Respaldiza, Ivet Salazar, Orlando Sosa, Hydn Trucios, Elena Valera, Javi Vargas, Gaudencia Yupari, Daniela Zambrano Almidón, tejedores Q’ero, Cusco, tejedores y bordadores de Junín, tejedores de Taquile, Puno, tejedoras y bordadoras Shipibo-Konibo.»

An intimate closing on Antigones: Workshop of Performative Poetics

With an intimate reunion at the multicultural library We need books, we closed the process of work made through spring and the last couple of months around Antigone, experimental writing and migration stories in Athens. The workshop was guided by Marios Chatziprokopiou and is part of the project ANTIGONES: BODIES OF RESISTANCE IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD [ANTISOMATA]

Pictures by the wonderful Eva Giannakopulou.

Escuchando a la política! Todos los episodios del podcast para Bisagra

Todos los episodios del podcast que hice para Bisagra, ya están subidos a nuestra web y a Spotify.

Este podcast realizado en el contexto de las elecciones presidenciales en el Perú, Escuchando a la Política, contó con la participación de Matheus Calderón, Elisa Fuenzalida, Gisselle Girón, Isaac Ernesto Ruíz, Patricia Gonzales, Pacha Sotelo, Milagros Olivera, Karen Bernedo, Fernando Nureña, Mercedes Condori, Marfil Francke, Max Lira, Gisela Ortiz y Pedro Mo.

Aching places, screaming words, premonitory agreements

Aching places, screaming words, premonitory agreements is an online workshop I developed for the beautiful program You are not muted, curated by Renata Cervetto for KW Berlin.

Here’s the invitation text for the workshop:

«How to express what aches, confuses or paralyzes us while being distanced? How to relate to protest and dissent when withdrawn from the public space? How to remain critical and socially engaged while dedicating our days to search for wellbeing under uncertain circumstances? Eliana Otta is a multidisciplinary artist from Lima whose practice proposes collective activities that intertwine orality, poetry, embodied knowledge and physical practices. Acknowledging how the need to redefine struggling actions and vocabularies seems as overwhelming as urgent, Otta’s workshop will embark on the task of identifying the possible meanings that the term “political” can bring into the pandemic context. It will review the foundational seams patching societies, questioning what Constitutions should be and do for us today, when most of us are revisiting what constitutes us as peoples and inhabitants of this planet. Expanding from the individual to the collective, we’ll work with words and imagination, with desires and poetry, navigating together from intimate goals to possible sources of political renewal.»

Misterio de Ministerias

«Este texto colectivo es resultado de una invitación realizada a poco de iniciarse la cuarentena, en abril. Escribí un correo a un grupo amplio de artistas, poetas, madres de familia, científicxs sociales, científicxs que estudian la vida no humana, arquitectxs, educadores, filósofxs, entre otrxs, para preguntarnos cómo reorganizar el estado peruano y sus ministerios, a manera de cadáver exquisito.

La proposición surgió de constatar cómo la presente situación, entre muchas cosas, nos demanda repensar el Estado, nuestra posición ante él y sus estructuras. Por mucho tiempo hemos creado, trabajado y participado de diversos tipos de activismo dándole la espalda o sin tomarlo en serio. Motivos para ello sobran en el caso peruano, pero es claro que la coyuntura actual nos llama a atender cuidadosamente las consecuencias de sus formas de ejercer y administrar la (bio y la necro) política…»

Para seguir leyendo, puedes descargar la publicación: