People

Alessandra Cianetti (she/her) is a London-based art worker. Her interconnected and interdependent practice within contemporary and performance art explores systemic socio-political issues, with a focus on intersectional borders, social justice, and the politics of labour.

Alessandra is the founder of performingborders, a platform for border artists and practices, which she co-directed until June 2025 and continues to support on a volunteer basis through writing, advocacy, and care. She has worked as a director, curator, grant-maker, and researcher across the UK and internationally conceiving, producing, and facilitating multidisciplinary and transnational projects, programmes, and collective organising within the arts sector.

Since July 2025, Alessandra serves as non-executive director of performingborders CIC. This role is unremunerated and focuses on governance, strategic support, and advocacy. She does not receive salary or fees from the CIC.

Image by Christa Holka

Xavier de Sousa (he/they) is an multidisciplinary performance maker and curator. Xavier has previously developed and co-curated performance events Queer Migrant Takeover, CUT Festival and Citemor Festival as well as New Queers on the Block, Marlborough Productions’ Artist and Community Development programme. 

Xavier’s performance works include Encruzilhada (Cultura em Expansão), Almost Xav (Southbank Centre), and the trilogy of collaborative shows POST (Ovalhouse, international tour), Pós- (Teatro do Bairro Alto & CITEMOR) and REGNANT (HOME, LiveCollision). They have recently launched a performance-exhibition What Becomes…(METAL, East Street Arts) and a series of multi-media podcasts Slow Cooking (Theatre in the Mill).

They have collaborated with Tim Etchels, Rosana Cade, Dori Nigro, AURA, Needless Alley Collective and presented work with Ovalhouse, HOME, East Street Arts, Latitude Festival, Tate Modern, Southbank Centre, The Yard Theatre (UK), Untethered Magic (Kenya), Warehouse9 (DK), Teatro do Bairro Alto (Portugal), Operastate Festival (Italy), Onassis Culture Centre (Athens), IIT Gujarat (India), Kalamata Dance Festival (Greece), amongst others.

Their creative practice also encompasses writing, having published various creative, reflective and research-based texts for publication houses such as METAL, Penguin, Les Cahiers Luxembourgeois. Previously, they launched the free-resource space Producer Gathering and worked on the development of the first Union-recognised Producer Agreement. 

Xavier is a founder of Migrants in Culture and is a member of BECTU.

Anahí Saravia Herrera (she/her) works at the intersection of community organizing, DIY publishing, and cultural work. She is thinking about how creative spaces can hold political questions and how we can build political alliances through cultural work. She is the current Civic Fellow at Cubitt Gallery, cares for performingborders and is incubating a community-led feminist press: Slow + Dirty, based at House of Annetta. Anahi is physically based in London, and thinks/ feels from the diaspora, she was born in La Paz, Bolivia.