People

Alessandra Cianetti (she/her) is a London-based curator, co-director, researcher. Her practice within contemporary and performance art explores systemic socio-political issues with a focus on notions and lived experiences of intersectional borders, social justice, and politics of labour.

Currently she is the co-carer and founder of the collectively-run platform performingborders, and PhD students’ supervisor at the TT- Transart Institute for Creative Research. Alessandra is also a mentor for the “Coltiviamoci” project run by the Ca’ Foscari University, Venice (Italy). 

Over the years, she has conceived, curated, produced, researched, written about, presented talks, and facilitated workshops about multi-disciplinary and transnational art projects, programmes, and collective organising within the arts sector across the UK, Europe, and internationally. Until recently she served as PhD Co-Programme Leader Consultant at TT, has worked as Curator and project manager at the Bagri Foundation until 2023, and has held the role of co-director of the grassroots arts organisation Something Human (2013-2017).

Alessandra has been part of various steering groups such as Intoart’s Artists Direct Change for visual artists with learning disabilities, the Culture and Diversity Advisory Forum of the Lewisham Borough of Culture, and she is a co-founder of the UK-based Migrants in Culture.

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.