Weaving Reflection and Practice
TAWA Practice explores culture, memory, writing, archives, language, and the ways knowledge moves across generations.
CULTURE · MEMORY · RESEARCH · WRITING
A journey can begin with a place. It can also begin with a story told again, a language someone decides to learn, a dance the body remembers, or a program book kept long after the gathering has ended. We begin to remember even as we experience our individual or collective journeys. We notice, interpret, move, listen, and learn. Later, a story, an object, or a gesture may bring that moment forward again—sometimes changed by the telling. I created TAWA Practice to follow these threads. Through research, writing, language, performance, and public humanities, I explore how cultural knowledge takes shape, how people carry it, and how they make it possible for others to encounter it.
Photo of Arani, Bolivia by Monica Flores
Practice in motion
01 The places that brought me here
02 Where the path leads now
03 where we can meet
The places that brought me here
My cultural practice has moved through museums, cultural programs, international exchanges, performances, and community spaces—each one offering a different way of encountering history, place, and one another.
I have developed and led heritage month programming, cultural performances, and educational experiences; coordinated public programs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History; and worked with international exchange initiatives including the International Visitor Leadership Program and Study of the U.S. Institutes.
That journey has also been shaped by my own long engagement with Bolivian folkloric dance and cultural practice, where heritage is carried not only through stories and objects, but through movement and memory. Moving between these different settings has taught me to notice how culture is interpreted, presented, and experienced—and how much of that work happens through relationships as much as through formal programs. Over time, I began to see these experiences as part of a longer journey. Every program is shaped by what happens before people arrive. What happens in a museum, on a stage, in a classroom, or along a journey may last only a few hours, but its meaning can continue to travel—with the people who experienced it, the stories they retell, and the questions they carry into the places that come next.
Where the path leads now
Today, I’m developing independent research and creative work around Andean cultural memory, community publications, language, and writing. One project may begin with a question in an archive. Another may begin with a remembered place, an image, or a story asking to be written.
I’m interested in what a record can hold and what people know through practice: a dance learned alongside others, a word heard often enough to become familiar, a way of gathering that changes over time. Each offers another way to understand how culture is made and carried forward.These are works in motion, and I share them as they take shape.
Where our paths might meet
Some journeys become richer when others join them. I collaborate with cultural organizations, academic institutions, artists, and communities to create ways of encountering culture, history, and language. We might develop a public program, explore a collection, shape an educational resource, or bring a story to a new audience.
I’m also available for lectures and workshops drawn from my research and practice. You’re welcome to bring an idea of your own, ask about work already underway, or begin with a question we might explore together.
The name behind the practice
Tawa means “four” in Quechua. Across my broader work, four areas—Transform, Align, Weave, and Author—give shape to different kinds of practice.
TAWA Practice is where I follow the cultural and creative threads: memory, language, research, and writing. The threads cross in the work itself.
A story calls for interpretation. A program takes people, planning, and care. A dance holds knowledge learned through movement and time. I follow these connections to understand what we inherit, what we make together, and what we carry forward.