Braiding Circles

Braiding Circles is not just a workshop series; it’s a community-building project with a mission to combat feelings of isolation and create spaces where individuals from diverse backgrounds feel a sense of belonging. Drawing inspiration from her familial history and the ongoing struggle for cross-cultural understanding, Veronica emphasizes the importance of interdependency and empathy in our survival.

“Interdependency and cross-cultural understanding are essential to our ongoing survival. Using this frame of reference for the work enables anyone to engage with this project to create empathy and understanding.” Veronica’s familial history, deeply impacted by the Puerto Rican diaspora and ongoing colonization, adds a personal dimension to the project. “My father, Miguel, was in the Puerto Rican diaspora when he was five years old,” Veronica shares. “This subsequent ongoing colonization of PR and moving folx out of their land fractured my familial history and left my father, and me, with a false sense of identity.”

Through braiding circles, Veronica invites participants to explore their identities and histories while engaging in the communal act of braiding. After the workshops, participants are invited to share their stories, which become integral to the artistic process. These stories, combined with the braids created during the workshops, are transformed into sculptures that resonate with humanity through sculpture and sound.

“The goal of this project,” Veronica emphasizes, “is to broaden the berth of shared and archived stories.” Drawing inspiration from the longstanding oral storytelling tradition in Black, Latinx, and Indigenous cultures, Braiding Circles seeks to preserve history and social practices while addressing feelings of isolation and loneliness in communities. Through this project, histories are kept alive, and communities are given a space to heal collectively from the impacts of white supremacy.