The first Social Art Studio Residency took place in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, in February 2019. Hosted by the Presencing Institute and TAE, the residency brought together twenty-two artists, designers, architects, educators, and social change practitioners from across Mexico and around the world for a ten-day exploration of an emerging question: What might social art be?
Rather than beginning with a predefined methodology or artistic outcome, the residency was conceived as an open studio for collective inquiry. The intention was to investigate how awareness-based practices, artistic processes, and social change might come together to form an emerging field of practice. Many of the questions that would later shape Studio Atelierista first appeared here: How can art become a practice of collective transformation? What happens when the creative process itself becomes the artwork? How might embodied awareness deepen our capacity to make together?