The LEIMAY Archive is comprised of a collection of materials documenting the history, creative works, and contributions of LEIMAY to the larger global ecosystem of multidisciplinary arts, butoh-dance, and its legacies while illustrating LEIMAY’s own cultivated craft rooted in materiality and the entanglement. The LEIMAY Archive centers on the artistic endeavors of multidisciplinary artists Shige Moriya and Ximena Garnica, and their community-oriented legacy of service programs, including  CAVE Gallery, New York Butoh Festival New York Butoh-Kan, SOAK, LUDUS, and numerous Presenting Series including OUTSIGHT, At Home, and AcTS, among other programming. Highlighting the artists and programs that have contributed to LEIMAY’s legacy, including internationally renowned figures in Butoh, experimental local and international visual artists from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, emerging theater and dance artists involved in LEIMAY’s multiple programs, and legendary figures of New York City’s avant-garde who have supported LEIMAY’s initiatives.

Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya are a Colombian and Japanese multidisciplinary artist duo based in Lenapehoking. Their collaborative works manifest as live installations, dance and theater performances, operas, and sculptures that are presented in theaters, museums, galleries, and public spaces. Alongside their performative and visual artwork, Ximena and Shige also invest their energy in critical research, printed and digital publications, community building, resource sharing, and cultural programming. Shige and Ximena are the co-founders and artistic directors of LEIMAY, and they speak about their multiple endeavors as: “We believe that the act of creation is an act of remembering while simultaneously becoming — a serpentine act of many temporalities, resonances, and echoes. We are invested in the entanglement from which culture and art emerge, and we value relationality, collaboration, and resource sharing as primary to our praxis. We seek transformation as an aesthetic. Our methods, mediums, and journeys are constantly shifting; however, we share a continuous need for attracting, provoking, and supporting exchange, generative confrontation, and collaboration. We work to dismantle our notions of self and belonging, dissolving social norms and systems of beliefs and compelling us to connect more deeply to one another.”

Led by immigrant artists, LEIMAY is an organization and arts ensemble that exists out of its founder’s live-work converted garage space called CAVE in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. CAVE  has been a refuge for immigrants and New Yorkers, providing live-work spaces, holding a regular NYC home season, touring productions nationally and internationally, offering classes to the public, presenting emerging and established artists, hosting educational and research activities, and collaborating with presenting/educational partners across NYC, in upstate NY, Colombia, Japan, and beyond. LEIMAY itself is a work of art, constantly transforming as a living organism open to new challenges, constantly re-shaping in response to internal and external dynamics.

Shuffle Show All