Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles
Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles (he/him) treads an elusive path that manifests itself performatively through creative experiences that he helps unfold within the quotidian. He has exhibited or performed at Madrid Abierto/ARCO, The IX Havana Biennial, PERFORMA 05/07/21, IDENSITAT, Prague Quadrennial, Pontevedra Biennial, Queens Museum, MoMA, Printed Matter, P.S. 122, Hemispheric Institute of Performance Art and Politics, Princeton University, Anthology Film Archives, El Museo del Barrio, Center for Book Arts, Longwood Art Gallery/BCA, The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Franklin Furnace, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Nicolás has received mentorship in art in everyday life from Linda Mary Montano, a historic figure in the performance art field. Residencies attended include P.S. 1/MoMA, Henry Street Settlement, Center for book Arts, Lower East Side Printshop, Artists Alliance Inc, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony. Nicolás holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, where he studied with Coco Fusco; and an MA from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. Since 2006, he has pursued trainings with key people in the healing, somatic movement, and writing fields, including Dale Borglum, Dr. Richard P. Brown, Dr. Patricia Gerbarg, Suzi Tucker, Kimberly Brown, Julie Davey, Anna Halprin, and Daria Halprin, among others. In 2021 he received a Mindfulness Meditation Teacher certification from the Interdependence Project in New York City. He has recently taught healing, meditation, and somatic movement related workshops at Copper Beech Institute, Hispanic Society of America, Sage-ing International and at the In My Mind conference at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center in New York. Born in Santiago de los Treinta Caballeros, Dominican Republic, in 2011 he was baptized as a Bronxite; a citizen of the Bronx. Nicolás is the founding director of The Interior Beauty Salon, an organism living at the intersection of creativity and healing. (Photo: Wady Céspedes Raful)
Website: https://www.interiorbeautysalon.com/
PERFORMANCE PROJECT:
In Life’s Letters I invite participants to use the letter-writing format as a channel to heal/re-member and gather parts of ourselves that may have been consigned to oblivion. The idea is to start from the traditional letter writing approach that most elders know so well, to inquire individually as well as a group on issues of aging in relationship to: forgiving, letting go, impermanence, love, the pandemic and the beauty of life. Through this process we explore writing letters to: our younger selves, loved ones, a person we admire, a child in our family with whom we would like to share key moments in our path, a person who was difficult to us, our struggles during Covid and the times that we might foresee opening up. Some of the questions that may prompt this are: Can we talk of a challenge that we overcame? If we could share a remarkable time with a youngster, what would that be? What is changing for us as we are growing older? What are we still learning from life? Where do we find beauty?
Letters to Life allocates ample room for introspective work as well as for sharing as a group as a way of attuning in community. The writings created during this residency are meant to serve as an archive of the participants’ lives and also as a time capsule of the very difficult yet interesting period that we are living in. They are meant to kindle reflection, active hope, and to offer insights into life and living. The vision is to bring these writings together in the form of a live performance (open mic style) involving volunteers who would read the letters generated as a way of embodying the narratives written by the elders, while giving the elders who wrote these narratives the opportunity to witness our own lives from different perspectives, that of the author and the observer, among others.
