In this talk, the artist Laura Anderson Barbata will exchange knowledge with the writer Marina Azahua about community work. They will discuss lessons learned when preparing the exhibition Wayamou: Common Tongues and will refer to the importance of dialogue with artists such as Sheronanawe Hakiihiwe and with communities such as that of stilts in Mexico and other countries.

Laura Anderson Barbata (Mexico City, 1958) is a transdisciplinary artist. She lives and works between New York and Mexico City. Since 1992, her practice has been deeply committed to social and community projects developed in the Venezuelan Amazon, Trinidad and Tobago, Norway, the United States and in his native country. One of her most significant ongoing projects is Transcommunality (2001- to date), a collaborative initiative involving stilt dancers, artists and artisans from Mexico, New York and the Caribbean. Her work is part of important private and public collections in the American Union, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Long Beach, California, among others. She has received numerous awards, including the artistic residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center (2019), the Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2016), and the Award for the Defense of Human Rights (2017), among others. She currently teaches classes in the Art, Culture, and Technology program at MIT, in Cambridge.

‍Marina Azahua (Mexico City, 1983) is a writer, editor, translator and anthropologist. Her work reflects on archival gestures, the politics of representation, the effects of violence and the forms of collective resistance that arise in the face of it. She is the author of Ausencia compartida. Formas de mirar (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2025), Retrato involuntario. El acto fotográfico como forma de violencia (Tusquets Editores, 2014) and the novel Archivo agonía (Sexto Piso, 2024). She studied History at the UNAM. She has a master's degree in creative writing and editing from the University of Melbourne and a doctorate in Anthropology from Columbia University. She received the Premio Interamericano de Literatura Carlos Montemayor (2015) and won the Certamen Internacional de Literatura Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz of the State of Mexico (2012). She was a fellow at the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes y de la Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas. In 2015 he co-founded Ediciones Antílope and is currently a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte.