Pedagogies of Tenderness and Hospitality as Policies to Heal the Colonial Wound
This event is organized by the Studio Art and Intervention | Concept (Prof. Marina Gržinić) and in collaboration with MEZEKƎRƎ – a new space for global and diasporic artistic practices exploring cosmologies of care, conviviality, and social transformation.
19–19:30 h
Lecture Performance
Pedagogies of Tenderness and Hospitality as Policies to Heal the Colonial Wound
Lia García (La Novia Sirena)
19:30–20:45 h
Conversation
Care, Nourishment, and Hospitality Through Artistic and Curatorial Praxis
Lia García & Marissa Lôbo
In this lecture performance, Lia García explores the politics of tenderness and care in her dual roles as an artist and pedagogue, drawing from her lived experiences in Mexico. The performance will be followed by an artist talk with Marissa Lôbo—artist, curator, and PhD candidate in Philosophy at the Academy of Fine Arts—whose work focuses on curating through care, hospitality, nourishment, and affection.
The colonial wound has left deep and lasting effects on our bodies and affections. Our skin carries the ancestral echo of pain, rage, frustration, and confinement caused by a brutal history of dispossession, violence, and capture. Across time, anti-colonial practices have fostered collective ways to heal these wounds. Among them, the pedagogies of tenderness and hospitality have emerged as powerful tools to question, create, and act.
Lia García (La Novia Sirena) is a performance artist, educator, and poet. Lia García is known for her radical trans activism, which focuses not only on defending LGBTIQ+ human rights in Mexico but also on crafting performative, educational, and poetic interventions in symbolically complex public spaces—prisons, hospitals, schools, military camps, and markets. García is the originator of the concept “aesthetics of radical tenderness” (2012), which has become a distinctive form of political activism across Abya Yala (Latin America). Her affective, artistic-pedagogical interventions challenge patriarchal violence and the marginalization of gender- and sexuality-nonconforming bodies—especially in Mexico, a country plagued by transfeminicides. She is the author of “Cucarachas Literarias,” the first archive of LGBTIQ+ children’s and youth literature in Latin America, and co-founder of Red de Juventudes Trans México, among other networks. Her work has been featured at major international festivals and in publications by Editorial Sexto Piso, Almadía, and the Hemispheric Institute of Performance.
Marissa Lôbo is an artist, curator, and cultural producer. Lôbo holds an MA in Post-Conceptual Studies and is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Her work is rooted in artistic and curatorial practices that center care, affection, and transformative politics. Lôbo was a member of maiz, a self-organized migrant collective, and is the co-founder and artistic director of Kültüř Gemma! She has co-curated innovative projects such as “Night School” at Wiener Festwochen, Smashing Wor(l)ds, and Vivências | Art as Vessel to Conjure Spaces of Softness, among others. She is currently involved in developing the MEZEKƎRƎ Festival for Global Majority Arts, Politics & Care.
MEZEKƎRƎ – a new space for global and diasporic artistic practices exploring cosmologies of care, conviviality, and social transformation (opening in 2026 in Vienna: mezekere.com).
