Jimena Vega
Jimena is a weaver. Descendent of Andean women, she uses visual art, architecture, and communal conversation to untangle intergenerational trauma and weave threads of connection. She asks, which threads have been cut? Which threads do we need to tend to again? The threads that connect us to our bodies; the threads that connect us to our dreams; the threads that connect us to nature; the threads that connect us to each other. Her visual art is an invitation to remember what colonialism would have had us forget: las mujeres lobas de quienes descendemos; los mensajes visuales y simbólicos que nos comunican los animales; la fuente infinitamente expansiva de la naturaleza a que pertenecemos cada uno. Her architecture, equally expansive, pushes us past las cajas cuadradas that society has put us in and seeks to reintegrate us with nature in that forgotten balance; it seeks not only to imagine but to materialize the physical structures needed for that connection. Jimena’s invitation is not only to witness but to participate. Through artmaking and communal conversation, she helps other women connect again to themselves, to their sacred femininity, to the natural world that gave it to them, and to the limitless individual and collective power we all have to create and sustain another balanced, beautiful reality.