About

Marlène Ramírez-Cancio is a Puerto Rican cultural producer, artist, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. As Artistic Director of BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, a multigenerational arts organization nurturing creative expression and artistic process, she creates spaces of inquiry and praxis for artist-led initiatives. Since 2008, she has directed EmergeNYC, an incubator and affinity network for socially engaged artists to develop their creative voice, explore the intersections of art and activism, and connect to a thriving community of BIPOC, migrant, and LGBTQIA+ practitioners. Now housed at BAX, EmergeNYC fosters a brave space for experimentation, risk-taking, and mutual accountability, and has over 300 alumni in New York City and beyond. Through Mujer Que Pregunta, Marlène works as a Process Doula and Tarot practitioner, helping artists, scholars, and cultural workers shape their ideas and clarify their vision. As Artist in Residence with Aster(ix) Journal, she created the Chancletazo for Your Soul deck, a reimagining of the Tarot Major Arcana with Latinx cultural icons. Marlène also co-founded Fulana, a Latina satire collective (active 2000-2018), and leads yearly satire and parody workshops for emerging artists. She serves on the Steering Committee of LxNY | Latinx Arts Consortium of New York, the Board of Directors of the National Performance Network, and the Board of Advisors of The Action Lab and the Center for Artistic Activism. She is also a founding member of the Cultural Equity Coalition of New York.

Until 2020, Marlène was Associate Director, Arts and Media at NYU’s Hemispheric Institute, where she honed her passion for connecting artists, scholars, and activists, forging spaces of creative inquiry and critical practice that enliven struggles for justice in the Americas. During her 17 years at Hemi, Marlène led the curation and production of Hemi’s large-scale, Encuentros, hybrid conferences-festivals that gathered about 700 participants in different cities every few years; created and directed EMERGENYC and Hemi’s Artist Residencies for local NYC artists; and co-created initiatives like the Helix Queer Performance Network, which supported queer artists of color and fostered intergenerational mentorship. Through HIDVL, a groundbreaking digital video library that archives and circulates the work of politically engaged artists, Marlène took great care not only to nurture the work of the diverse emerging, mid-career, and master artists she engaged, but to ensure their practices were documented, made publicly available, and preserved for future generations. In 2018, she curated “Cuerpxs Radicales: Radical Bodies in Performance,” a live art series presented at the Brooklyn Museum in conjunction with the Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 exhibition.

Marlène holds an MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish from NYU, an MA in Comparative Literature from Stanford University, and a BA in Comparative Literature from Harvard University.