Cristina Velásquez & Emily Sheffer in Conversation: Somos Animales Poéticos (Online)

@ About The Griffin Museum is pleased to host an online conversation with photographic artist and publisher Cristina Velásquez, joined by Emily Sheffer, photographic artist, educator, and book designer, to discuss Velásquez’s recently published book Somos Animales Poéticos. In Somos Animales Poéticos, Cristina Velásquez challenges the traditional gaze by presenting the body and the landscape as shifting terrains of memory. Rather than a static cultural portrait, the work uses gesture and fragmentation to examine how gender and heritage are performed, inherited, and resisted. Velásquez’s accompanying texts, written in Spanish and translated to English, anchor the images in intimate, personal experiences, reflecting on feminine resilience and collective imagination. Domestic interiors, landscapes, and the body are shown as sites of both memory and change. The book itself—its open spine bound with bold red thread—echoes the raw vulnerability of its contents. Cristina Velásquez is the recipient of the first Dust Publishing Prize. Join us online on October 1 at 6:30 pm for an illuminating conversation about the project, its evolution into book form, and the layered histories woven throughout its texts, portraits, and landscapes. About Cristina About Emily ENROLL NOW © Somos Animales Poéticos by Cristina Velásquez About Cristina Cristina Velásquez (b. Colombia) is a photographic artist and publisher based between Austin and Bogotá. She holds an MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies from the joint Bard College and International Center of Photography (ICP) program (2017). Her work has been exhibited at the Musée de l’Elysée, the ICP Museum, ArtBo, MoMA PS1, and the Houston Center for Photography, among others, and is held in private and public collections. Her photobooks are included in the permanent collections of The Met, the Getty Research Institute, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. Her latest monograph, Somos Animales Poéticos, was recently featured in the New York Times. Velásquez’s practice has been recognized with the Interlude Artist Sustaining Grant (2026), the Lucie Scholarship Prize (2025), a Yaddo Residency (2025), the Dust Collective Prize (2025), the ReGeneration4 Prize at the Musée de l’Elysée (2020), the Carol Crow Fellowship (2019), and a Light Work Artist-in-Residence (2019). She is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of New Poetics Publishing, an independent press that collaborates with emerging artists on contemporary and experimental approaches to photography in book form. She also serves as art director for Paisajes Coloniales. She is represented by Assembly Gallery. Cristina Velásquez About Emily Emily Sheffer is a photographic artist, educator, and book designer. She is the founder of Dust Collective, a publisher of art books. Each title is carefully crafted with close attention to materiality and the beauty of the photographic image. Dust Collective publishes works that engage with landscape and memory, often as metaphor and narrative space. Emily Sheffer The Griffin Museum of Photography Add to calendar Google Calendar iCalendar Outlook 365 Outlook Live Ticket Information