Photoville

Cinthya Santos Briones

Cinthya Santos Briones

Cinthya Santos Briones is a visual artist, educator, and cultural organizer with indigenous Nahua roots based in New York.  She studied Ethnohistory and Anthropology and for ten years Cinthya worked as a researcher at the National Institute of Anthropology and History in México 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. Through a variety of non-linear storytelling mediums she juxtaposed photography, historical archives, writing, ethnography, drawings, collage, embroidery, and popular education. Cinthya holds an MFA in creative writing and photography from Ithaca-Cornell and a certificate in Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism from the International Center of Photography (ICP). Currently she is an Adjunct Faculty at the Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Since 2022 she is part of Columbia University Visiting Critic artist.

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), City Artist Corps (2020), National Fund for Culture and the Arts of México (2009/2011), Wave Hill House Winter Residency (2023), Mellon Artist Fellow at Hemispheric Institute in NYU University (2023-24), BricLab Contemporary Art (2023), 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, among others.  As a writer, her texts have been published in academic and journalistic magazines such as NACLA and The Nation and newspapers such as La Jornada.

Cinthya has exhibited her work individually and collectively in galleries and museums such as Sky Blue Gallery in Portland Oregon, Latinx Project, NYU, International Center Of Photography, Museo del Barrio, Museum of the City of New York, Trout Museum in Wisconsin, Paul W. Zuccaire gallery, Stony Brook, among others. She has given Artists Lectures at universities like Boston College, CUNY, Stony Brook, NYU, SUNY New Paltz,  Dutchess Community College, Columbia, to name a few.

Archive Exhibitions Featuring Cinthya Santos Briones

Herbolario Migrante (Migrant Herbalism)

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive

Migrant Herbalism is a project that examines the belief system of traditional Indigenous and Afro-descendant Latin American medicine and how their knowledge, healing practices, and rituals have migrated with forced displacement to the United States.

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Living in Sanctuary

Annenberg Space for Photography
 archive : Photoville LA

A long-term project documenting individuals living in sanctuary across the US––the last alternative for keeping families together while they fight for a suspension of deportation.

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Abuelas: Portraits of The Invisible Grandmothers

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2017

This project focuses on undocumented Mexican immigrant women who came to New York decades ago in search of opportunity for their families. Overtime, they built their lives here and have become elders of their communities: the abuelas.

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Archive Sessions and Events Featuring Cinthya Santos Briones

Jun 42024

Photoville Education Field Trip: Cinthya Santos Briones’ “Herbolario Migrante”

Artist talk with Cinthya Santos Briones, photographer of “Herbolario Migrante”

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Jun 12024

Herbalism: Cyanotype Workshop with Medicinal Herbs

Create cyanotypes on fabric and paper to capture the souls of medicinal herbs.

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Sep 222019

Working Together

What does it mean to enter into collaboration in the photographic process? Join us to hear five women talk about their projects and practices that are rooted in working with others.

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