K'acha Willaykuna Community | K'acha Willaykuna Ayllunchik

Co-PIs

Alcira Dueñas is an international scholar and associate professor of Latin American history at Ohio State's Newark campus. Her book Indians and Mestizos in the ‘Lettered City’: Reshaping Justice, Social Hierarchy and Political Culture in Colonial Peru (2010) was awarded the Thomas McGann National Award for the best book on Latin America by the Rocky Mountains Council for Latin American Studies in 2010. Dueñas received fellowships from Fulbright, the NEH, the Max-Planck Institute and the J.C. Brown Library. She is producing a book on the legal and social practices of colonial Andean cabildos. Dueñas engages in visual, historical and creative exercises with her students at Newark, where they produce an Andean Gallery Project.
Contact: duenas.2@osu.edu

Portrait of Pamela Espinosa de los Monteros

Pamela Espinosa de los Monteros is assistant professor and Latin American studies librarian with The Ohio State University Libraries. Her research focuses on knowledge equity and internationalization of the curriculum in order to support engagement with knowledge production from distinct communities and world regions. As a co-PI of the K’acha Willaykuna Collaboration, she supports interdisciplinary initiatives that advance access and preservation of indigenous knowledge sources and teaching curriculum.
Contact: espinosadelosmonteros.1@osu.edu

Richard Fletcher is associate professor in the Department of Arts Administration, Education and Policy at The Ohio State University. He writes about contemporary art and education under the pen name Minus Plato. His book No Philosopher King: An Everyday Guide to Art and Life under Trump was published this year by AC Books, and he is currently writing about contemporary decolonial critique, art education curriculum and the legacies of the 2017 exhibition documenta 14. As a co-PI of the K’acha Willaykuna collaboration, he focuses on global Indigenous art making and decolonial theory and praxis through processes of unlearning, delinking, decanonizations and declassicisms within the institutions of the museum and the university.
Contact: fletcher.161@osu.edu

Elvia Andía Grágeda is a linguist specializing in the study and instruction of Bolivian Quechua and Spanish. She holds a Master’s degree in Linguistic Policy of Indigenous Languages in Higher Education, and investigates the role of Quechua in such policies, particularly in the Quechua Public Indigenous University in Bolivia. She has worked as the Departmental Coordinator in the Ministry of Education for the country of Bolivia in Intra- and Intercultural Multilingual Education. Andía joined Ohio State in 2016 and is a senior lecturer teaching Quechua for both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as beginning Spanish.
Contact: andiagrageda.1@osu.edu

Megan Hasting is assistant director for the Center for Latin American Studies. She holds a dual M.A. in Public Policy and Management and Latin American Studies, both from The Ohio State University. Megan is responsible for the day-to-day operations of CLAS, overseeing grant management and coordinating the M.A. in Latin American Studies graduate program. She also manages all academic and outreach events, center communications and financial administration duties. As a co-PI of the K’acha Willaykuna Collaboration, Megan helps with administrative oversight and project and event support.
Contact: hasting.6@osu.edu

Eric J. Johnson is associate professor and curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts with The Ohio State University Libraries. He also serves as the Curator of Thompson Special Collections. His research focus lies in the fields of medieval manuscript studies, with particular emphasis on manuscript fragments and their reconstruction, the history of the early book and special collections-based pedagogy. As a co-PI of the K’acha Willaykuna Collaboration, he promotes the utility of considering books, manuscripts and other historical, cultural and artistic documents as material objects, each with their own unique way of embodying and presenting multiple layers of meaning through their physical qualities and forms.
Contact: johnson.4156@osu.ed

Guisela Latorre is a Professor in the Department of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies. She specializes in modern and contemporary U.S. Latinx and Latin American art with a special emphasis on Chicana/Latina feminism. She is the author of Democracy on the Wall: Street Art of the Post-Dictatorship Era in Chile (2019) and Walls of Empowerment: Chicana/o Indigenist Murals from California (2008). In addition, she was co-curator and co-author of the exhibition/book ¡Murales Rebeldes! L.A. Chicana/Chicano Murals Under Siege (2017). Her other publications include “The Art of Disruption: Chicana/o Art’s Politicized Strategies for Aesthetic Innovation” in The Routledge Handbook of Chicana/o Studies (2018) and “Indigenous Images of Democracy on City Streets: Native Representations in Contemporary Chilean Graffiti and Muralism” in Street Art of Resistance (2017). She is currently working on an anthology on the arts collective Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo.
Contact: latorre.13@osu.edu

Michelle Wibbelsman is associate professor of Latin American Indigenous cultures, ethnographic studies and ethnomusicology (SPPO); curator of the Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Arts Collection; and director of the Ohio State Andean Music Ensemble. She conducts fieldwork in her native country of Ecuador. As lead co-PI of the K’acha Willaykuna Collaboration, she helped conceptualize this interdisciplinary initiative around material cultural production, oral traditions and performance practices as key sites of Andean/Amazonian indigenous knowledge, memory and meaning making.
Contact: wibbelsman.1@osu.edu

Graduate Research Associates

Andrew Mitchel is a first-year PhD student in Cultural Anthropology and the K’acha Willaykuna 2020-2021 graduate research associate. He received his BA from the University of Michigan in Anthropology and Spanish, and an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. His MA thesis concerned the Dominican academy system run by Major League Baseball, to which young Latin American baseball players are recruited and signed at sixteen years old in their first step toward potential major league stardom. His current dissertation plan is to study Latinx foodways around the Midwest. He hopes to learn about how food traditions, as well as jobs in food service and food production, play into livelihoods for Latinx folks in this part of the country.
Contact: mitchel.13@osu.edu

Alanna S. Radlo-Dzur is a doctoral candidate in Art History at OSU and a Research Specialist at the Getty Research Institute (GRI). She was the K’acha Willaykuna graduate research associate in 2019-2020. Her dissertation on invisible concepts depicted in Nahua visual media of central Mexico is informed by analysis of Nahuatl etymologies and semantic groupings. For the GRI’s forthcoming digital edition of the Florentine Codex (1580), she is creating multi-lingual (Nahuatl-English-Spanish) terms to identify the content and iconography in 2,000+ illuminations, making the images searchable. The terms are also included in the databases of the Getty Vocabularies, which museums and archives around the globe use to describe objects in their collections. She is an advocate for language revitalization and the creation of open-access projects that open the archives to empower Indigenous communities.
Contact: radlo-dzur.1@osu.edu

Artists and Collaborators

Pachaysana Institute

Daniel Bryan is an educator, activist and artist, Daniel specializes in the use of participatory theatre as a means of education and conflict transformation. Originally from the United States, he has lived in Ecuador for 20 years. He is Pachaysana’s co-founder and Director and a regular lecturer and scholar/artist in residence at colleges in the US, most recently with Juniata College, American University, Brown University and UNC – Chapel Hill. His current research, carried out with local Ecuadorian communities, applies embodied methodologies to the exploration of epistemic violence. He holds an MA in Education from the University of Tulsa and an MFA in Theatre from UCLA.
Contact: daniel@pachaysana.org

Chelsea Viteri is an activist, educator, youth worker, and artist at heart, Chelsea was born and raised in Quito, Ecuador. She completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at Clark University in Theater Arts and Community Development and Planning. She has worked with diverse communities in both Ecuador and the United States, utilizing theatre, music, poetry and Hip-Hop as a means for collective empowerment and creative conflict transformation. She is the Resident Director of Pachaysana’s “Rehearsing Change” study abroad program. Her current research explores systemic injustice at the intersection of gender, race and land. Contact: chelsea@pachaysana.org

Daniel Acosta is a community activist and defender of Mother Earth, Daniel works on education projects that help youth and families develop a closer relationship with the land. He is from the rural Andean community of Pintag where he works on projects that link agroecology, the arts and liberation pedagogy. He is currently leading a local seed bank project that links collective identity to cultivating and exchanging seeds. He is Pachaysana’s Community Coordinator and has a BA in Communication from the Universidad Cristiana Latinoamericana.
Contact: acosta@pachaysana.org

Belen Noroña, born and raised in Quito, Ecuador, is one of Pachaysana’s co-founders. She is a scholar, activist, and educator with over ten years of experience working with rural and indigenous communities in social development and educational projects in Ecuador. She has a Ph.D. in Human Geography from the University of Oregon and has taught for Beloit College and the San Francisco University in Quito. She is currently developing methodologies in non-formal education as part of a Mellon Foundation grant.

Grace Logan is an alumnus of American University’s School of International Service, Grace participated in Pachaysana’s Rehearsing Change program in 2017. After graduating, she became Pachaysana’s Fellow for the last two years, during which time she has co-coordinated community-based education programs, Participatory Action Research projects and led Pachaysana’s international outreach department.

Cassandra Press

Kandis Williams is the founder and editor-at-large of Cassandra Press, a publishing project, which produces lo-fi activist and academic texts, flyers, posters, pamphlets, and Williams’s Readers series. Williams was born in 1985 in Baltimore, Maryland and studied at the Cooper Union School of Art. Her practice spans collage, performance, writing, publishing, and curating, and it often explores and deconstructs critical theory around race, nationalism, authority, and eroticism. Her ongoing collage practice serves as a catalyst and container for work in other mediums, such as choreography, performance, and pedagogy. Some of her current features include the 2020 edition of the Made in LA biennial at the Hammer Museum in Westwood and at Huntington Libraries. In Fall 2020, the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) will open Kandis Williams: A Field, a multi-stage solo exhibition curated by Amber Esseiva highlighting all aspects of William’s practice, which will run through Summer 2021 as part of the Museum’s Provocations commission series.

Aline Baiana is a Brazilian artist working with Cassandra Press. Born in 1985, in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.  Graduated in cinema, studied environmental management and contemporary art. In her research she addresses what could be called the “ontological conflict” between the North and the Global South. Baiana has participated in several exhibitions in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Sharjah and was recently commissioned for the Berlin Biennial 11. You can view her artwork on her personal website here. Photo Credit: Kristina Kast

Artist in Residency

Sebastián Calfuqueo Aliste (Santiago, Chile 1991) is a contemporary Mapuche artist from Chile who uses ceramics, installations, performances and video art to reflect critically on the Mapuche subject’s social, cultural and political status. Calfuqueo’s art explores cultural similarities and differences as well as stereotypes produced at the intersection of indigenous and western ways of thinking.
Contact: seba.calfuqueo@gmail.com

AWANA Red de Artistas y Gestores Interculturales Comunitarios

Óscar Betancourt Campos
Ecuatoriano, gestor cultural y músico independiente. Lcdo. en Gestión para el desarrollo local sostenible, máster en Gestión cultural y políticas culturales. Ha fundado y gestionado varias redes comunitarias. En el campo de la música, es cantante, compositor, arreglista y director musical.
Ecuadorian cultural administrator and independent musician. BA in Sustainable Development; MA in Cultural and Political Culture Administration. Founder and administrator of various community networks. Singer, composer and music director.

Ati Amaru Cachimuel Amaguaña
Músico y compositor Kichwa Otavalo. Forma parte de diferentes grupos de música andina enfocados en revitalizar los sonidos ancestrales dentro de un contexto contemporáneo, director de la escuela de Música Andina Yarina.
Kichwa Otavalo musician and composer. Member of various Andean music groups focused on revitalizing ancestral sounds in contemporary music context. Director of the Yarina Andean Music School.

Ana Lucía Cachimuel Amaguaña
Ecuatoriana del Pueblo Kichwa Otavalo, cantora y gestora cultural comunitaria, maestrante en Gestión cultural y políticas culturales. Fundadora y coordinadora del Centro Intercultural Comunitario Yawar Wauki, docente de la Universidad Central del Ecuador facultad de artes musicales.
Kichwa Otavalo Ecuadorian singer and cultural administrator. MA in Cultural and Political Culture Administration. Founder and coordinator of the Centro Intercultural Comunitario Yawar Wauki (Intercultural Yawar Wauki Community Center). Teaches in the College of Musical Arts at the Universidad Central del Ecuador (Central University of Ecuador).