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OHMA EXHIBITS: a collection of interactive oral history encounters

2023 Bio Aya Taveras

Aya is from the Manhattan Valley neighborhood bordering Columbia's campus and brings an intimate awareness of how stories of impacted communities can be obfuscated or viewed through a prism of stereotype.

Aya began her career as a middle school English Language Arts teacher and currently works as Director of Story and Representation at Perception Institute where she interrogates how implicit bias, identity anxiety, and stereotype threat can emerge in the media landscape.

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Quisqueyanas Valientes: Bienvenidos a Nuestra Sala (2023)
By Aya Taveras
This exhibit, inspired by the 2020 "Mujeres de Abril" collection by visual artist Lourdes Bernard, created a container for the reflections of Dominican women who lived through the 1965 U.S. invasion of the island. The "sala" is a space that organically holds the firsthand accounts of Dominican women across generations. In this context visitors heard their impressions of Dominican womanhood--a set of narratives that add nuance to what is predominantly told as a singular narrative of machismo and repression.

In this in-person exhibit visitors were invited to listen to the accounts of Dominican women on the under-represented stories of the revolutionary femme-identifying "Mujeres de abril" and how this group's legacy--among others--may have informed their beliefs and attitudes about their own identities. Visitors engaged directly with the artifacts within the sala as vehicles for these oral histories.

Note: This in-person exhibit was open by invitation only. For more information about the project, contact Aya Taveras at at3719@columbia.edu.