Garnica and Moriya’s collaborative work exposes and amplifies the multiplicities that exist spatially and temporally within the body and between materials and environments. They cultivate and practice a deep integration of the in-betweens of life, craft, social, and poetic realms. In their artistic work, they seek the circulation of relationalities through materials by looking for balance in spaces of absence and potentiality. Absence is a space in which action can emerge. Their work exists at the edges and lives in the action of rising. It opens up cracks in the spectator and creator so that questions of being, perception, interdependency, and coexistence can be triggered to create the possibility of action or transformation

In their practice, which they call LUDUS, they cultivate an ambiguous body and in-between space and the force that surfaces when their Colombian, Japanese, and immigrant identities collide and dismantle our notions of self and belonging, dissolving social norms and systems of beliefs, and compelling us to connect from our porous selves and resonate with the world around us.

The body-conditioning aspects of LUDUS nourish deep states of listening and explore potential connections between the body’s materiality, voice, and thoughts, as well as between spaces and materials. With LUDUS, Garnica and Moriya are invested in holding space for practicing a radical embodiment of imagination through play, challenging Eurocentric approaches to movement, space, and time.

Their collaborative works strive to embrace differences, face the uncertainties of being, provoke, question, connect, and inspire.

Ximena Garnica is a New York City-based, Colombian-born immigrant working as a multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, director, curator, designer, and teacher. With her partner, Japanese artist Shige Moriya, Garnica is the co-founder and co-artistic director of the arts entity called LEIMAY, which means “a moment of light in the darkness” or “a moment of transition” in Japanese. Part of their work is created with the LEIMAY Ensemble, and their embodied practice LUDUS transmits the lineage of butoh dance and experimental visual and performing arts. They are invested in the entanglement from which culture and art emerge, and they value relationality, collaboration, and resource-sharing as primary to their praxis.

Their multidisciplinary works include dance, theater, sculpture, video, film, mixed-media, and light installations, photography, training projects, stage performances, and publications. Their works have been presented at US venues such as BAM Fisher, the Brooklyn Museum, the Japan Society, the Watermill Center, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and internationally in Japan, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Mexico, and Colombia. They have maintained collaborations with renowned artists (Robert Wilson and Ko Murobushi) and they have received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, NYSCA, and NEFA, among others. Recently they were nominated for Herb Alpert and United States Artists awards. They have been reviewed in The New York Times, TDR/The Theater Drama Review, The New Yorker, and Hyperallergic, among others. They are part of the theater faculty at MIT and was recently a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California Riverside. Their writing has been published by Routledge.

Garnica is an advocates of affordable live-work spaces. Their activism was instrumental in effecting changes at the New York state level to protect live-work spaces in New York City. More recently, Garnica, through LEIMAY, cofounded the Cultural Solidarity Fund, which has provided over $1 million in $500 relief microgrants to NYC artists and cultural workers affected by COVID-19. With her partner they continue multiple organizing efforts to sustain what they call the “entanglement,” a loose knot, cluster, or constellation of relationalities—an intention to live a life in poetry.

Shige Moriya is a New York City-based, Japanese-born immigrant artist working as a multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, director, curator, and designer. With a background in architecture in the mid 90’s he moved to NYC and opened what has been described as one of the first experimental art spaces to emerge in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, under the name of CAVE Gallery, now known as CAVE, LEIMAY’s permanent home, studio, and performance and exhibition venue for the development of all of LEIMAY’s artistic work and programs. LEIMAY, which means “a moment of light in the darkness” or “a moment of transition” in Japanese, is an arts entity he co-founded with his partner, Colombian artist Ximena Garnica. Part of their work is created with the LEIMAY Ensemble, and their embodied practice, LUDUS transmits the lineage of butoh dance and experimental visual and performing arts. He is invested in the entanglement from which culture and art emerge and the values relationality, collaboration, and resource-sharing as primary to his praxis.

His multidisciplinary works include dance, theater, sculpture, video, film, mixed-media, light installations, photography, training projects, stage performances, and publications. His works have been presented at US venues such as BAM Fisher, the Brooklyn Museum, the Japan Society, the Watermill Center, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and internationally in Japan, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Mexico, and Colombia. He has maintained collaborations with renowned artists (Robert Wilson and Ko Murobushi) and received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, NYSCA, and NEFA, among others. Recently with Garnica, they were nominated for Herb Alpert and United States Artists awards. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, TDR/The Theater Drama Review, The New Yorker, and Hyperallergic, among others.

Moriya is an advocate of affordable live-work spaces. His activism was instrumental in effecting changes at the New York state level to protect live-work spaces in New York City. With his partner, they continue multiple organizing efforts to sustain what they call the “entanglement,” a loose knot, cluster, or constellation of relationalities—an intention to live a life in poetry.