FOUNDER & CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Sonia Guiñansaca is an international award winning queer migrant poet, cultural organizer and social justice activist. They emerged as a national leader in the migrant artistic and political communities where they coordinated and participated in groundbreaking civil disobedience actions. Guiñansaca helped build some of the largest undocumented organizations in the US, including co-founding some of the first artistic projects by and for undocumented writers and artists. Sonia has worked for over a decade in both policy and cultural efforts building equitable infrastructures for migrant artists. They have been awarded residencies and fellowships from Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation, Poetry Foundation, British Council, Creative Time, and the Hemispheric Institute for Performance & Politics. Their migration and cultural equity work has also taken them to London and Mexico City to advise on migrant policy and arts programming. Consults for national social justice organizations, cultural institutions, and foundations on artists convening, cultural activations, and civic engagement. Past clients include: Fwd.us, Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, and The Rasmuson Foundation. Sonia self-published their debut mini chapbook Nostalgia and Borders in 2016. They are the co-editor of the forthcoming anthology “SomeWhere We Are Human” (HarperCollins June 2022).

2022-2023 Artist in Residence

A Pisces, a writer, and an artist. Her visual artworks are inspired by Oaxaca. Her writings are memories of growing up in an immigrant household, leaving home, transitioning, and exploring trans womanhood. Alexa, a Voices of Our Nation (VONA) alum and a 2013 UndocuWriters Fellow, has been featured in Pariahs: Writing from Outside the Margins (2016), and the forthcoming anthology “Somewhere We Are Human” (HarperCollins June 2022). She graduated from Santa Ana Community College in 2020 with a degree in fashion design. She now lives in Corona, California, with her husband Ismael, and their four cats. Her first solo exhibit, “Cisne” is on view at The Garcia Center For the Arts.

2023-2024 Artist in Residence

A Venezuelan Colombian creative living in D.C. on Piscataway Conoy Lands. They are a graduate of the University of Maryland and currently an artist of residence with House of Alegría. They center their work on themes of transformation, the depthless and waves of grief, the complicated existence of an undocumented immigrant and our ancestral connection to nature — dreaming, creating, and fighting for worlds where there’s no negotiation for identities or communities. They were a part of the 2023 EMERGENYC virtual co-hort, have been published in the anthology Somewhere We are Human and are a co-creator of the Venezuelan queer digital zine, Venecuir Writings. They exist within the immortality of fungi, lichen, and the interconnectedness of celestial bodies. You can find them devouring the nearest donut shop or book towers deep at their favorite bookstore.

ADVISORY BOARD & GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Rommy Torrico is a formerly undocumented, queer, trans/nonbinary visual artist born in Iquique, Chile; raised in Naples, Florida; and is currently based out of NYC. They have been involved in the (im)migrant rights struggle for several years and infuse much of their work with personal experience and the stories their community shares. Over the years, Torrico’s work has been included in several publications and exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the Americas and internationally.

ADVISORY BOARD

Lylliam Posadas is co-founder of Your Neighborhood Museum and the Project Co-Lead for the Caring About and Repatriating Everything (CARE) workshop series. Lylliam has over 10 years of museum experience as well as experience in public health as a community advisor. Lylliam investigates the intersections between different fields and collaborates with others to rethink practices in repatriation, collections stewardship, accessibility, and research in favor of community centered approaches. Lylliam has participated in archaeological field research in Ghana, Peru, Louisiana, and California and received an MSc in the Technology and Analysis of Archaeological Materials from University College London and a double BA in Anthropology and Psychology from UCLA.

ADVISORY BOARD

Vivian Sming is an artist-publisher based in the Bay Area, who produces a wide range of artists’ books through her publishing studio Sming Sming Books. Formed in 2017, the studio experiments with books as art, discourse, exhibition, and archive, created in close collaboration with artists whose works and ideas inform design, material, and printing choices. Sming is invested in creating books from practices that are challenging to represent on paper, and is committed to promoting critical discourse and advancing cultural equity through the format of publishing.

Sming is the former Editor in Chief of Art Practical, co-founding editor of nonsensical, and is currently the Design Director at 826 Valencia. She holds an BA in Art from UCLA, an MFA from CalArts, and was a 2016–17 Fellow at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Titles from Sming Sming Books have been collected by over eighty libraries, museums, and universities, nation- and worldwide. Select books have been featured in aperture, Art in America, BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, and the New York Times. In 2018, Sming Sming Books received the Shannon Michael Cane Memorial Award from Printed Matter, Inc. and in 2020, the San Francisco Art Book Fair Publishing Grant. Past workshops and lectures have been held at ArtCenter, Asia Art Archive in America, California College of the Arts, Columbia University, UC Berkeley, and Vancouver Art Book Fair.

Vivian Sming (she/they)

🐯 smingsming.com

📕 @smingsmingbooks

ADVISORY BOARD

Dorothy R. Santos is a Filipino American storyteller, poet, artist, and scholar whose academic and research interests include feminist media histories, critical medical anthropology, computational media, technology, race, and ethics. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz as a Eugene V. Cota-Robles fellow. She received her Master’s degree in Visual and Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts and holds Bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of San Francisco. Her work has been exhibited at Ars Electronica, Rewire Festival, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the GLBT Historical Society. Her writing appears in art21, Art in America, Ars Technica, Hyperallergic, Rhizome, Vice Motherboard, and SF MOMA’s Open Space. Her essay “Materiality to Machines: Manufacturing the Organic and Hypotheses for Future Imaginings,” was published in The Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture. She is a co-founder of REFRESH, a politically-engaged art and curatorial collective and serves as the Executive Director for the Processing Foundation. She is also an advisory board member for POWRPLNT and the House of Alegria.