Social Art Studio Residency 2019



About
 Process
 Residency team
 Participants
 Partners
         


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?
Process                   Learning journeys         Sharing practices         Thematic village & Social art studio         Impact

The residency was intentionally rooted in the cultural and ecological landscape of the Yucatán. During the first days, participants immersed themselves in Mayan history, cosmology, local communities, and the natural environment through visits to archaeological sites, haciendas, conversations with archaeologists, cultural practitioners, conservationists, beekeepers, artists, and young people. These learning journeys were not designed as research visits but as opportunities to develop a deeper embodied relationship with the place and the people who inhabit it.
Alongside these immersions, participants engaged with awareness-based and social art practices drawing from Social Presencing Theater, including Voices from the Field, 4D Mapping, meditation, 20-Minute Dance, and the daily practice of writing haikus. These practices invited participants to move beyond observation and analysis by sensing social systems through the body, giving form to multiple perspectives, and cultivating aesthetic attention to lived experience.



As the residency unfolded, it became clear that participants also needed time to encounter one another's own artistic practices. An additional day was therefore dedicated to short experiential presentations, where each resident created a 15-minute experience introducing their own craft and way of working. Rather than conventional presentations, these became invitations into one another's artistic worlds, creating a shared language that later informed the collaborative making process.

Only after several days of immersion, reflection, and exchange did the residency transition into prototyping. Using a collective clustering process called Thematic Village, participants articulated the questions and possibilities they wished to explore. These gradually converged into four collaborative prototypes centred on Mayan youth, performance and haiku, nature and culture, and the future of the Yucatán as a place for social art.



The second half of the residency became a functioning social art studio. Daily structure was intentionally kept minimal, consisting primarily of morning awareness practices and collective check-ins, while participants organised their own working rhythms, found collaborators across groups, sought feedback, and iteratively developed their ideas. The emphasis shifted from planning towards making, allowing artistic forms to emerge directly from shared experience rather than predetermined concepts.
The residency concluded with a public presentation at Hacienda Ochil, where participants shared performances, installations, meal experiences, participatory rituals, and artistic interventions developed throughout the ten days. Rather than presenting finished artworks, these prototypes offered ways of making relationships, cultural heritage, ecological awareness, and collective experience visible through artistic practice.
Duration

10 days

Format

in-person

Participants

22 residents (local + international) + 15 local community members

Outcome

15
1 final exhibition



The first Social Art Studio Residency in the Yucatán laid the conceptual foundation for Studio Atelierista, bringing together awareness-based practice, embodied inquiry, collective prototyping, creative freedom, and process as an artistic medium. It also initiated an ongoing international dialogue around social art, generating collaborations and methodological approaches—including Voices from the Field, 4D Mapping, Thematic Village, haiku, and embodied reflection—that have since evolved across residencies in Italy, France, Finland, and beyond. The residency established the artistic residency as a living laboratory for collective creativity, relational awareness, and new ways of making together.
Residency Team
Arawana Hayashi
Claudia Madrazo
Ricardo Dutra
Participants
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?
Partners


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