We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Antonieta Carpio a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Antonieta, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?

When you become an artist, you are asking to be perceived and if you are lucky, you are received.

However, more often than not, I find myself as a multi hyphenate artist being mischaracterized, mis categorized and misunderstood. From the outside looking in, it’s easy to see my discipline of work and want to categorize me as a brown theater artist, when I know I put myself in positions to curate moon circles, make music and produce social justice fundraisers. I really believe there’s nothing you can’t do or branch out to and its hard to vocalize the need for expansion as an artist. Its has been difficult for me (some inner child work for real) to not have a need to fight the impressions put on me through my work. To stand in what I do, when I do it and how, to be who I am, regardless if it’s something I’ve never done or been, is a lesson I am still working myself through.

Antonieta, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m Antonieta Carpio. I’m a Salvadorean interdisciplinary artist working in cross disciplines of theater and music in the PNW. I started my career in Los Angeles as a production and stage manager and have now have dipped into design, acting, curation and all aspects of event planning. I’ve been and am a model, one half of a zine publishing company @cryforafry, a fundraiser queen for mutual aid groups, a dancer, a storyteller and a poet.

People work with me to be connected. I have a great knack for connecting community members that mutually can bloom with each other. It’s helped that I can jump from different spaces while meeting other amazing artists/community and be able to curate and create these interdisciplinary endeavors. A huge value of mine is to maintain a social justice lens in all the work that I do. You’ll find a lot of Queer and Brown work on my resume as its part of my practice to accentuate these stories of the overlooked and the under-cared for. I’m really proud of that. I am here for the dreamers. The ones with ideas that have never been done and want to try.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

COMMUNITY COMMUNITY COMMUNITY. The amount of work I kept to myself, sound-boarded off the walls in my room and dreams that never saw the light of day because they weren’t “ready” to share, but in reality in the beginning of my process I just didn’t have the right people to share it with.

Having community you trust- that is curious about you, was the ultimate resource for me to get things off the ground and into play. There are huge amounts of meet ups, open jams, online forums where your idea could breathe a little bit more and possibly become more.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

See yourself as one. It’s easy to create categories and label folks as non creative or creative, beautiful or not beautiful, but in reality the best thing society can do is to see others as they would see themselves. Empathy can create change that can lead to resources, exposure and general support, so many things!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.esmeraldantonieta.com/
• Instagram: @antonietacarpio

Image Credits
Main photo – Skatey P
Letters to My Dead Lovers Promo- Elvia Susana Rubaclava
Dream House Opening Night Promo- Marcia Davis
Brassroots District Producer Shot- Maris Jones
Garden Photoshoot- Matt Lyles