About LACAP

Board of Directors

SEBASTIAN OREAMUNO is a queer, disabled, introvert multi-media artist and dance scholar. Born in what is colonially known as Santiago, Chile, raised in Skwxwu7mesh, B.C., and currently residing and creating in Tkaronto, his practice emerges from a life lived between cultural worlds. Specifically, Sebastian's artistic and academic work is rooted in the borderlands of identity, memory, and embodied intuition. At the moment, he is completing a PhD in dance studies at York University on the relationship between movement and memory with a focus on cueca, the Chilean national dance.

MIGUEL GONZALEZ is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Science at York University in Toronto. His research and teaching relate to three broad themes and projects: Indigenous self-governance and territorial autonomous regimes in Latin America, the governance of small-scale fisheries in the global south, with a particular geographical concentration in the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast, and emerging authoritarianisms and the reduction of autonomous public spheres in Latin America, including restrictions to academic freedom and research, criminalization of civil society organizing, and persecution of independent journalism. Currently, Dr. Gonzalez is the PI for a SSHRC-PDG grant entitled Emancipatory Horizons for Self-Determination of Indigenous and Afro-Descendant Peoples in Central America, a transnational community-engaged research initiative aimed at documenting, analyzing, and promoting the emancipatory knowledges and autonomy strategies of Indigenous and Afrodescendant peoples in Central America.

ROSA LABORDÉ, Chair is a playwright, screenwriter, director and actress and has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, Dora Mavor Moore award and received the K.M. Hunter Artist’s Award for Theatre. She also garnered a Gemini nomination for her acting in television and a Dora Nomination. She is Co-Artistic Director for Criminal Theatre and is Playwright-in-Residence at the Tarragon Theatre and Aluna Theatre. She is a graduate of The Oxford School of Drama and The Canadian Film Centre.

SEBASTIAN MENA, Chair is a first-generation Canadian-Chilean artist from the West Coast with over three decades of experience in the performing arts. His artistic path began at Puente Theater under the mentorship of Lina de Guevara, a pioneering Chilean director. Sebastian moved to Toronto to train at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, where he transitioned into a professional dance career. In 2008, he founded Monster Feelings, a multi- disciplinary performance arts collective. His work has been featured in festivals such as the Toronto Fringe, the Salvador Allende Festival for the Arts, and FFIDA. Sebastian graduated from the University of Toronto where he produced and co-hosted "El CafeciTo," a podcast.

CAROLINA GANA provides Social Work Psychotherapy, Reiki and Healing Arts and Community Education. With a deep appreciation for the Arts, Carolina weaves expressive arts into mental health care. As a Chilean-Canadian health care provider, Carolina has spearheaded mindful textile Trauma Therapy programs, "Hilos Resilientes/Resilient Threads" utilizing Arpilleras and Story Cloth to attend to intersectional experiences of gender based violence, systemic oppressions and forced migration. Carolina works in private practice in Toronto, offering service in Spanish and in English.