Uplifting Latinx identities, communities, and stories through multimedia storytelling.
Dance Collage Blackout Poetry Painting
Dance Collage Blackout Poetry Painting
About the Artist
Natalia Cervantes is a proud Latina artist from Manhattan Beach, California. She earned an MFA in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis from Duke University in 2025 and a B.A. in Psychology and Dance with a minor in Latina/o/x Studies from The American University in 2023. She has performed at The Kennedy Center as a member of the locking crew, Cinematic, and presented her undergraduate Capstone work, Familia Cervantes, at the American College Dance Association Mid-Atlantic South Region Conference. Over many years, she created a multidimensional practice called welding, which opens space through the body in motion to process seemingly intangible borderlands, or third/in-between spaces. Currently, as a dance instructor in Los Angeles, she is finding constant inspiration from her spirited and passionate students.
Her multimedia artistic approach explores embodied memory by moving freely between several art forms, such as blackout poetry, collage, painting, and dancing. Vulnerability and celebration are at the heart of her work. Natalia is committed to uplifting Latinx identities, communities, and stories through her roles as a multimedia artist, collaborator, teacher, and storyteller.
The pillars of my creative process are storytelling, vulnerability, imagination, and community. These anchors guide my multimedia artistic approach that allows me to process embodied investigations in a nonlinear fashion. The multiple creative avenues involved in my process include, but are not limited to, dancing, blackout poetry, collaging, writing, painting, photography, and video and sound editing. The traces of my multimedia creative process form a living archive of artifacts that inspire my movement explorations, where I unravel the memories held within the archive of the body.
Artist Statement
My artistry is fueled by my Latina identity and my fascination with borderlands, or third/in-between spaces, inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa’s borderlands theory. To explore the borderlands across bodies, materials, generations, and memories, I have developed a practice called welding. welding is a layered investigation of embodied translation that prioritizes how my body immediately reacts to personally or culturally significant artifacts. This is followed by a movement processing of a video recording from the initial exploration. welding is a long-term practice, as it can continue for an unlimited number of layers and can re-engage any artifacts accumulated over time. I am invested in this practice and beyond to make space for diverse Latinx experiences in the United States and to celebrate the vibrancy of our community.