Cinthya Santos-Briones

Documentary Photographer
   
Location: New York City
Nationality: Mexican
Biography: Cinthya Santos Briones is a Mexican participatory artist, anthropologist, ethnohistorian and community organizer based in New York. Her multimedia work uses collaborative and community narratives of self-representation to tell stories about... MORE
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ABOUT
Copyright Cinthya Santos-Briones 2024
Updated Mar 2022
Cinthya Santos Briones is a nahua-mestiza participatory artist, popular educator and community organizer based in New York. She grew up in small towns between mountains and valleys surrounded by indigenous communities -Nahuas, Otomi and Tepehuas- in central Mexico. She studied Ethnohistory and Anthropology and for ten years Cinthya worked as a researcher at the National Institute of Anthropology and History focused on issues on indigenous migration, codex, textiles and traditional medicine. As an artist, her work focuses on a multidisciplinary social practice that combines participatory art and the construction of collective narratives of self-representation. Through a variety of non-linear storytelling mediums she juxtaposed photography, historical archives, writing, ethnography, drawings, collage, embroidery, and popular education.
She is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the Magnum Foundation (2016/2018/2020), En Foco (2017/2022), National Geographic Research and Exploration (2018), We Woman (2019), National Fund for Culture and the Arts of México (2009/2011), etc. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Pdn, California Sunday Magazine, Vogue, Open Society Foundations, Buzzfeed, The Intercept, New Yorker,  The Nation Magazine, La Jornada, among others.
She is co-author of the book “The Indigenous Worldview and its Representations in Textiles of the Nahua community of Santa Ana Tzacuala, Hidalgo”. And the documentary, The Huichapan Codex.
Cinthya has worked at pro-immigrant organizations in New York as a community organizer on issues such as detection, education, and sanctuary. She has volunteered in programs accompanying migrants to the courts and asylum applications. And she is a guardian of unaccompanied migrant children.
Currently she is an Adjunct Faculty at the Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

Cinthya is part of “Colectiva infancia” (childhood collective) made up of a group of anthropologists who works through ethnographic and visual research on studies around childhood in relation to migration, violence, urban studies and epistemologies of the Global South (https://infanciasenmovimiento.org/colectiva-infancias/)

Artist Statement

Her art is a constant exploration of her past and identity. Grounded in its indigenous Nahua and mestizo roots. The stories of her grandparents and her essence have been part of her work as an artist as well as an ethnohistorian and anthropologist. She grew up in a hybrid culture, linked to pulque, charrería, traditional huapango music, indigenous cuisine, textiles, and the Nahuatl worldview.Through theories and methodologies learned in the social sciences, she explores how the human body is crossed by migration. How the being is re-territorialized in the transnational space.Her work addresses ideas and ways of interpreting identity, language, and culture linked to indigenous ontologies and Mesoamerican thought. She uses counter nonlinear narratives to challenge historical and racial stereotypes around the imaginary of migrant, working class people, and extractivist practices. Her art is a practice of being in community and a means of transmitting restorative messages.



Clients

New York Times, The Intercept, The Nation Magazine, Pdn Online, Buzzfeed, Open Society Foundations,  Vogue, Open Society Foundations, Haaretz, La Jornada, NACLA, PROOF: Media For Social Justice, Vision Project, Delayed Gratification Magazine, Democracy Now, etc.


Cinthya is available for assignments worldwide.

E-mail: cinthyas.briones@gmail.com

Phone: 347 549 65552


Languages: 

Spanish and English

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Botanica

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The Sacred Flora

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Mictlán

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Amatl

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COMMUNITY ART ENGAGEMENT

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Migrant Herbalism

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Workshops

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Máté

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Ethnobotany

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Landscape Grammar

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Semantic Field of Color

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Angelica

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Códice de la Cruz-Badiano

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COMMUNITY ART ENGAGEMENT

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ANTHROPOLOGY

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NEWS

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WRITING

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Amoxtli: The Migration Codex

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Tlayacoxtli

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Street Vendors

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Migrant Herbalism

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Curanderos

Cinthya Santos-Briones / new york
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