My visual art and poetry are experimental in nature and guided by Indigenous Futurisms, as well as interdependence and systems of care. The stories I share are ancestral and urge land rematriation and stewardship, imagine futures free of borders and prisons, and affirm radical love and kinship in all its forms. Though art and storytelling flows through my veins and communities, it was never promised under this capitalist, American hegemony. To nurture my poetic way of seeing the world, and my role as an artist in helping to build a better world, is a decision I make with every breath, and one I love to do, no matter the strife and struggle. I am dedicated to preserving the Indigenous Mexican & Dominican stories and customs my family passed down to me and colonialism tried so vehemently to quiet.
I currently live between the ancestral lands of the O’Odham and Piipaash, as I pursue my MFA in Creative Writing at Arizona State University, and the Lenapehoking, as I return home to be with family and community. I serve as Culture Change Coordinator with United We Dream, Artistic Development and Teaching Assistant with The Center for Imagination in the Borderlands, and continue to teach poetry and visual arts to middle-school students in the South Bronx through DreamYard, ArtsConnection, and YUCA Arts, as well as host free virtual writing workshops to nurture creative expression as liberatory element.
Let's talk art — I am always excited to talk collaborations and projects! See my CV for previous speaker and facilitator engagements. Bios available below.
Bios
Long Bio:
Ayling Zulema Dominguez is a poet, mixed media artist, and youth arts educator with roots in Puebla, México (Nahua) and República Dominicana. Grounded in a poetics of anticolonialism, their art and writing ask who we are at our most free, and explore the subversions and imaginings needed in order to arrive there. Their collages juxtapose images of the body with that of structural injustice to prompt critical interrogation of our current systems of punishment disguised as justice. Ancestral veneration, Indigenous Futurisms, and communing with the archive are major themes in Ayling’s writing. What can language do for our rebellions, reclamations, and resistance efforts? How can we use it to birth new worlds and weave our ancestors into the fabric of them? What to do with all this rage and sorrow and joy, all this inheritance? Ayling is a 2024-25 Artistic Development and Teaching Assistant with The Center for Imagination in the Borderlands, and was previously a 2023-24 UC Berkeley’s Arts Research Center Poetry & The Senses Fellow, 2023 Desert Nights, Rising Stars Conference MFA Presenter, 2023 Prufer Poetry Prize Finalist, and received Honorable Mention for the 2022 Lorca Latinx Poetry Prize. Ayling’s writing has recently been supported by Tin House, We Need Diverse Books’ Walter Dean Myers Grant, and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. Select poems of theirs have been published in The Poetry Project, The Seventh Wave, The Texas Review, The Acentos Review, and elsewhere. Ayling continues to nurture creative expression among community by hosting free monthly writing workshops online, installing interactive public artworks, and hyping up fellow poets and artists at local open mic joints. Ultimately, they believe in poetry as a tool for liberation. While presently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at ASU, Ayling also serves as Culture Change Coordinator with United We Dream.
Short Bio:
Ayling Zulema Dominguez is a poet, mixed media artist, and youth arts educator with roots in Puebla, México (Nahua) and República Dominicana. Grounded in a poetics of anticolonialism, their art and writing ask who we are at our most free, and explore the subversions and imaginings needed in order to arrive there. Their collages juxtapose images of the body with that of structural injustice to prompt critical interrogation of our current systems of punishment disguised as justice. Ancestral veneration, Indigenous Futurisms, and communing with the archive are major themes in Ayling’s writing. What can language do for our rebellions and resistance efforts? How can we use it to birth new worlds and weave our ancestors into the fabric of them? What to do with all this rage and sorrow and joy, all this inheritance? Ayling’s writing has recently been supported by Tin House, We Need Diverse Books, and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. Ayling continues to nurture creative expression among community by hosting free monthly writing workshops online, installing interactive public artworks, and hyping up fellow poets and artists at local open mic joints. Ultimately, they believe in poetry as a tool for liberation.