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Embryo Lab
Artist in Residence

Kecya F. Donnelly (b. 1983)  Multimedia artist, Brazil.  
Currently resident in San Francisco, CA.  

For this newest exploration, the idea of an Embryo is born from where Kecya invited a cross-cultural team of females to collaborate, developing seeds of art that blend ritual, performance, and installation.  

 Co.labs 

Adriana Cavalcanti (Brazil)

Adriana is a native of Rio de Janeiro Brazil and has a background in botany, ecology and landscape architecture. For seven years she has been dedicated to bringing awareness through social projects and research for environmental protection in Brazil.  Currently living in Minneapolis, she has been sharing a studio, interacting with several artists exploring the crafting of ceramics. Moving to the US, in 2013 she had her first contact with ceramics, which opened a deep and meaningful territory in her life and career. She found in ceramics a wide space for dialogue and a strong connection with nature and the essential elements. Over the last three years, she has developed methods associated with an interdisciplinary blending of botany, landscapes and ceramics, navigating into a new way of expression, a new discovery of her work with nature, as an artist. 

 

“The idea of using art as a sensorial stimulus that heals the body fascinates me. The body is our own environment, and when it is well balanced we are capable of seeing ourselves as natural beings. When this happens, we are more likely to understand the struggles of the outer environment and to be aware of our actions. My interest in collaborating with the Embryo Lab is to experience, learn and multiply this interactive method of healing the inner and the outer environment.”

 

Alexandra Causse (France)

Alexandra was born and raised in France, and moved to San Francisco in 2006. She attended the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2012, becoming certified in Sound, Voice and Music Healing.  Through her studies, she has gained insights into the powerful science and mystery of vibrational healing and human resonance.

Love for music started at a young age. As a child her parents soothed her with the sound of the piano every night (and let her dance every day to it). Music listening became a ritual that she continues to use in adulthood as a way to feel safe, loved, alive and grounded.

 

"As a lover of multi-media arts, I feel very inspired by the work and ongoing art-installations of the Babalawo Satya.  I am excited for the opportunity to collaborate with and within the Embryo art space and watch my own creative process unfold. My wish is to bring space, trust and equanimity for an authentic celebration of life, birth and transformation.”

Jaime Chiang (USA)

Jaime is a first generation Chinese-American. Born and raised on the East Coast, she completed her studies at New York University with degrees in International Business and Marketing, and in culinary management at the Institute of Culinary Education.

 

She is interested in how all aspects of life can be used towards awakening and healing. By observing the shifting of ideas, culture, relationships and environment, she connects with the energetic source of a space or narrative and then allows her creative process to organically unfold from there. She takes a multi-disciplinary approach to her creative work, combining elements of multimedia content production, spatial design, branding, culinary and spiritual studies. 

 

"Being part of a conscious creative community and the love for learning inspired me to collaborate with Babalawo Satya Lab."

Laura Hirca (Romania)

Laura grew up in the North part of Romania in a 400 years old village surrounded by songs and stories told by her grandmother and mother, a professional folk singer. She began studying operatic voice with one of the chorus members of the Romanian Philharmonic Orchestra. She moved to the US  9 years ago and joined “ Orfeo Ensemble” an early baroque music group and continued to study operatic voice with a couple of teachers in the Bay Area.

For the last 18 years she has been part of a spiritual community in the 4th Way tradition of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky practicing the art of Self Remembering. In 2016 she graduated from the CIIS Sound Healing Program in San Francisco and she recently joined the "Echo Chamber Orchestra" in Marin County as their Executive Director .

In May 2016 she founded “Sound Village” with a couple of  friends from CIIS, a monthly improv gathering of sound/music lovers. Sound Village celebrates the authenticity hidden in each of us and aims to create an emotionally safe container for breath, sound and voice to come to life in community.

"Being part of Embryo Lab is to embrace the vision of the the feminine through art, ritual and intallation(...)

There is elegance and style in Kecya's vision.  The group of artist in collaboration are authentic and rooted in their cultures which makes it genuine."

Nuola Zeng (China)

Nuola is a native of China.  She moved to San Francisco in 2014 to study social practice art in the graduate school of the California College of the Arts. She is also practicing in drama therapy, sound healing and expressive art groups to generate a socially engaged healing art project.  Her platform of works is multimedia, performance, integrative embodiment game, sound and video installation. Her work relates to social engagement, healing art, bringing the body to perceive a multi-dimensional reality related to cosmology, movements, and space. She is exploring the relationships between body-art, art-community, and architecture-space.

 

“I would like to cooperate developing our cities and countryside, transforming our daily space into to discovery layers to integrate the human-planet-universe system. For That, I am learning and practicing the living art of “人”,“从” and “众”.  “人” is the way of being human. “从”  is the way of being connected with others. “众” is the way of living as the collective consciousness of the cosmos.

My interest to collaborate in Babalawo Satya Lab is to discover and practice deep connection with the spirit, bringing the invisible to be visible, to the public, and from an individual to the space which connects us. The invisible beauty is already here waiting for us to re-discover it.”

Shelly Napoleon (Hawaii)

Shelly was born on the island of Oahu, Sonoma County is now her home.  Her life and explorations have been around the art of making people feel welcome and at home. This is one of Shelly’s gift. For over ten years, she has been offering shamanic dancing meditation journeys called Mystical Involutions. Certified at CIIS as a practitioner of Sound, Voice, and Healing, she blends sound and dance guiding groups and individuals into life’s sacred journey. For Shelly, space and intention are keys to allow an open heart to listen to what is within us.

"Participating in Embryo Lab is exciting to me because it is a collaboration.  I am happy to bring an experience of space where intention comes first.  You are invited, welcomed, and safe.  This is sacred space"

Terry Hwang (USA)

Terry is a first generation Taiwanese American, born and raised in San Francisco. She finds healing in dance + movement art, folklore, and ritual. Her muses are lush island foliage and folded paper cranes. As a producer, she shares her project management skills with creatives and endeavors that resonate with her spirit, in a commitment to bring beauty, kindness, and healing to each space she touches. 

 

"I was so moved to collaborate with Embryo Lab because the grace, simplicity, warmth, and beauty of Kecya's vision moved me deeply, and I am excited to grow as an artist in my own rite through this process." 

Virginie Dubois (France)

Virginie completed her art studies at the Kabk Art Academy and Koncon Royal Conservatory in Den Haag in 2013, and received a second master degree in applied arts at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam in 2014.

Her work focuses on the relationship between sound, space and architecture; and more generally between sound and the listener.
Using architecture and urban places as musical instruments, Dubois explores the sonority of space and develops sound installations, sound walks and public interventions with the idea to enhance the acoustic qualities of the space.


"In my approach, ‘walking’ and ‘listening’ are essential: they are the fundamental tools at the heart of my practice. By bringing awareness and presence to simple actions and social behaviors, my goal is to invite the audience to experience ‘listening’ as a playful and powerful methodology.
From walking to intentionally wandering, from hearing to carefully listening, one will learn how to consciously and fully partake in the environment.
It is then that the perception of sound becomes a spatial event, a material phenomenon, and a physiological experience."

Whitney Reed (USA)

Whitney was born in Park City Utah and moved to San Francisco in 2012 to pursue her PhD in Clinical Psychology.  She has spent the past 18 years practicing, studying and teaching body awareness through meditation, massage and mindfulness. She believes that by cultivating awareness and compassion of body/mind one can discover a deeper, happier and more honest way of existing from one moment to the next.

 

Currently, she is a consultant for tech startups and companies, bringing mindfulness to a corporate environment. Utilizing a horizontal methodology, she advises groups and individuals about how to integrate mindfulness into their infrastructure. She is also conducting retreats for groups in Mexico, where people are surrounded by a peaceful ambiance of exotic beauty of nature.

 

“I am passionate about cultivating compassion and awareness of the body/mind and how this creates a deeper happiness in life. Collaborating at Babalawo Satya Lab interests me because the individual steps into a compassionate womb of causes and conditions that support awakening and embodiment, using art as a tool to pursue those investigations.”

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