Encarnar
A Variety Hour of Performance, Sculpture & Poetry
Featuring
Mariana Mejía
John H. Guevara (Chuquimarca)
Crystal Vance Guerra
Time: 7:30pm-9pm
Date: Saturday, February 7, 2026
Venue: Polilla Librería, Frontera 146, Roma, CDMX
CDMX—Join us for Encarnar, a variety hour featuring poetry, sculpture, and performance at Polilla Libreria during Mexico City’s art fair week!
Organized by Chicago poet Crystal Vance Guerra, Mexican archivist Mariana Mejía, and director John H. Guevara from the art library project Chuquimarca, this event looks to have a public sensorial and interactive conversation on poetic incarnations, material legacies, and interpretive transcripts.
There will be a poetry reading, participatory sculpture, and guided activity that incarnate bodies of knowledge. Participants will receive two objects to mark and materialize this conversation.
This event is part of Chicago’s Archives + Artists Project 2025 sponsored by Sixty Inches From Center. Prompted by the theme of “embodying the archive”, this year’s program connects archives and artists whose practices lean towards performances and memory work that take place in the body.
SPANISH
CDMX—Encarnar es una hora de poesía, escultura y performance bilingüe en Polilla Librería durante la semana de Feria de Arte en la Ciudad de México. El programa propone una experiencia participativa que investiga el cuerpo como archivo y las huellas materiales de la memoria.
Organizado por John H. Guevara, director de un proyecto de biblioteca de arte Chuquimarca en Chicago, Mariana Mejía, un archivista mexicana, y Crystal Vance Guerra, poeta en Chicago, este evento busca sostener una conversación pública, sensorial e interactiva sobre encarnaciones poéticas, legados materiales y transcripciones interpretativas.
Habrá una lectura poética, escultura participativa y una actividad guiada que encarna cuerpos de conocimiento. Los participantes recibirán dos objetos para marcar y materializar esta conversación.
Este evento forma parte del Chicago Archives + Artists Project 2025, presentado por Sixty Inches From Center. A partir del eje “encarnar el archivo,” el programa de este año conecta archivos y artistas cuyas prácticas se inclinan hacia el performance y el trabajo de memoria que ocurre en el cuerpo.
Biographies
Crystal Vance Guerra is a chicana poet, historian, and educator based in and between Chicago and Mexico City. Her art is latinamericanist at root, often spanglish in expression, and written to be read out loud. She is the founder of Chicago’s only poetry slam in Spanish, Slam Diáspora. Now in its third year, this slam brings together Latinx poets in the U.S. and poets across Latin America to foster unity between our poetic communities despite borders. Throughout her poetic journey she has participated in numerous poetry slams, festivals, and residencies on both sides of the Rio Bravo, while developing workshops focused on encouraging the exploration of sound, languages, and embodiment in poetry. In addition to her poetic craft, Crystal has worked as a freelance journalist and researcher, with her work published in Yes! Magazine, The Guardian, Truth-Out, and AREA Chicago. She holds a B.A. in Africana Studies and Latin American and Caribbean Studies from Brown University and an M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Mariana Mejía born in Mexico City, is a curator and arts administrator focused on cultural exchange across the U.S. and Latin America. With a background in both arts administration and international cultural policy, she brings a cross-disciplinary approach to her roles as curator, archivist, and arts administrator. She has worked in embassies, museums, universities, and community organizations across the U.S. and Latin America. Her approach to archives includes teaching the studio-seminar Artist Archives and Legacies in the Historic Preservation Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where she engaged students with diverse archival collections as teaching resources. She also piloted Open Archive Sessions, a participatory model designed to expand accessibility to artists’ archives, presented at the Hyde Park Art Center and the Staple & Stitch Book Fair. Mariana holds an MA in Arts Administration and Policy from SAIC and a BA in International Relations from ITAM (Mexico City).
John H. Guevara is a Chicago curator. He was recognized as one of Chicago’s Art Top 50 Visual Vanguards in 2022 by Chicago’s Newcity Magazine and is a board member at the non-profit art organization Comfort Station. He has participated in residencies at Chicago Artist Coalition, Independent Curators International, and No Lugar Arte Contemporaneo in Quito, Ecuador. His writings are published in Newcity Magazine and The Latinx Project’s Intervenxions. In 2019, he founded the art library project Chuquimarca, in which he has programmed with Chicago institutions like the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Depaul Art Museum, Mana Contemporary, and Hyde Park Art Center.
Polilla Librería is a self-managed and independent project that arose from the need to share a love for books. The intention has always been to create a space for people who find Latin American literature as a pretext to come together and spend pleasant time with each other. Therefore, from the beginning, the goal of creating a community was accompanied by concrete actions such as bringing Mexico publishing projects, books, and ideas from Latin America that, for various reasons, were not readily available in this part of the world—despite the geographical and cultural proximity. Since the bookstore opened, this intention has been reflected in a catalog comprised of publications of all kinds (art books, traditional books, small or large, with or without ISBNs, fanzines, chapbooks, etc.) that are produced throughout the continent especially in Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, and Argentina.
Chuquimarca is an art library participating in the making and exchanging of art knowledge and language by gathering art books and organizing cohort-led programs. It acquires art books, supports research through the Tanda program, and supports art writers through the Muña Art Writing Residency. The library values and prioritizes material and immaterial art resources related to diasporas, the Global South, and Indigenous perspectives.
The Chicago Archives + Artists Project connects artists and archivists to reimagine futures and histories. CA+AP seeks to spark new experiments in creative interpretation, to showcase the rich histories and materials being preserved in participating archives, and to share archival practices with local artists and their communities. Over the years, the Project has taken many forms, such as artist talks, an exhibition, festivals, and our book, Chicago Archives + Artists Project: Case Studies in Collaboration.
Sixty Inches From Center is a worker-led organization and publishing platform that produces collaborative projects about artists, archival practice, art history, and culture in Chicago and the Midwest. We are a collective of arts workers, writers, editors, artists, curators, librarians, and archivists who promote and prioritize the preservation of culture within Indigenous, diasporic, queer, and disability communities of our region.
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