La Otra Taller Nepantla is a creative healing residency honoring Gloria Anzaldúa's 1995 El Mundo Zurdo workshop. We create sanctuary for LGBTQIA+ BIPOC artists, writers, healers, and educators to rest, heal, create, and resist erasure.
Seven nepantleras gathered on the Gulf Coast of South Texas for 28 days: Anel I. Flores, Ceiba Ili, Reb Mari, Alexandra Nichole Salazar, Qween Paz, Brandy Garcia, and Aminah. We cooked together, held ceremony, created art, rested, and healed—without institutional demands.
Four years later, we are all creating, sharing resources, celebrating victories, and showing and collaborating. This proves: when we resource each other, transformation lasts.
When Texas criminalizes our existence through bathroom bills, drag bans, and attacks on gender-affirming care, we respond by choosing each other. This work creates infrastructure for LGBTQIA+ BIPOC communities to rest, heal, create without extraction, build lasting support networks, and resist erasure.
Aminah Decé is a member of Return of the Matriarch, a Hip-Hop group completed by Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson. Together RoM has featured their message of youth and women empowerment at South by Southwest, Luminaria, The McNay Art Museum, The Carver Community Cultural Center and multiple schools and universities in the Central Texas region. Return of the Matriarch is preparing for The Bad Mama Jama Mixtape Remix and a long-awaited album, Queendom Come.
– “Comba Tai inspires me to give. I would not be where I am without the support of my village;without beings guiding and assisting me in maintaining balance.Art is life. I live a little, teach a little.”Her Imperial Highness,
Heir Apparent to the Royal Warrior Nation of Comba Tai,
Li’ilt Nidan,
Parham, Ami Nah Decé
is trained at the World Combat Academy, Institute of Martial Science and maintains degrees of The Humanities, Fine Arts & Art History/Criticism from The University of Texas, San Antonio.
– “See what had happened was.”
Under the pseudonym P16, she began her artistic journey as a slam poet in Killeen, Texas, discrediting the concept of white supremacy through a variety of media and performance. Her literary works have been published and broadcast through multiple platforms since 2005. Aminah’s most recent collaboration with San Antonio Museum of Modern Art responded to works from the Abstract Womanism Exhibition.
– “Hootie Hoooooooooo”
By day Aminah teaches Visual Arts at Kirby Middle School, influencing capable young people by blending their academic, social, emotional, & self-control traits to assist them in mastering the developmental tasks necessary to enjoy a satisfying & productive life. By night Aminah leads Progrés Studios and A o.K Art House to collaborate with local artists and organizations to create Happenings and conduct workshops in the community that promote the skills of self-awareness and trauma healing through creativity.
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Anel & Dr. T. Jackie Cuevas talk about her work, the water, South Texas, and La Otra Taller Nepantla
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