Amuletos

An Amulet for-Seeing Each Other
Toronto · September 25–26, 2026

CO-PRESENTED BY HEMISPHERIC ENCOUNTERS & SENSORIUM: CENTRE FOR DIGITAL ARTS & TECHNOLOGY (MEXICO) (CANADA)

An Invitation from Creators, Alina & Alicia:
Toronto is a meeting place for many migrant, refugee, and diasporic communities. Yet a paradox remains: while multiple cultures converge in the same city, their stories often remain separated, as though each community inhabited its own parcel of the urban landscape. We invite you to cross these invisible boundaries and gather around a shared question: How might we recognize, within our differences, the common conditions that have shaped migration, displacement, exile, and the search for refuge? Seeing each other—and listening to one another—may help us imagine other ways of living together and other futures yet to come.

Join us in making small hand-embroidered amulets filled with salt and protective plants. Each participant will stitch a symbol, image, or word carrying a wish for care, strength, or safe passage. Conceived as a collective and relational activation, the gathering brings people together through the slow gestures of embroidering, filling, exchanging stories, and listening. No previous embroidery experience is needed: every stitch can open a conversation, and every amulet can become a gesture of protection offered to someone else. An Amulet for Seeing Each Other invites us not only to see one another, but also— by aligning ourforeseeing —to envision and begin weaving a shared future.

Description:
What forms of relational poetics can a minimal object and a minimal gesture activate when they circulate as gifts in times of brutality? The Amulets project unfolds through participatory activations centered on making small textile amulets: embroidered pouches charged with personal symbols and materials of care, meant to be worn close to the body and to accompany displacement, harm, and the searches carried out by families of the disappeared. In today’s landscape of multiple violences in Mexico, collaborative textile practices—most often driven by women—have gained particular force as a repertoire of public intervention. They open spaces for shared mourning and for the production of memory.

In this four hour session, participants will build and receive an amulet as a gift of protection and care to send to other parts of the world.

*This activation works with specific communities of migrants, refugees, and marginalized displaced individuals.*

If interested in registering for this FREE workshop please FILL OUT THIS FORM by Thursday, September 24.

September 25, 2026 at 2:00 PM
September 26, 2026 at 2:00 PM

Fri. Sept. 25th, 2pm-6pm (Factory Theatre Lobby)
Sat. Sept. 26th, 2pm-6pm (Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace)

“Through the making and exchange of textile pouches, minimal gifts become relational practices that sustain presence where violence seeks erasure”

Alina Peña Iguarán

The Amulet project began in Guadalajara, Mexico, a city where violence against migrants is often read at a distance. The idea of creating a communal gathering with the focus on giving, receiving and reciprocating, responds to our on-going desire to use art to manifest the worlds we want to live in. To create an object of protection for someone you don’t know, or might never know, fills me with love and hope. Alicia and Alina are committed to working with communities and creating extraordinary initiatives.

Beatriz Pizano, Aluna Theatre Artistic Director

About the artist

Alina Peña Iguarán

Alina Peña Iguarán is a research professor at ITESO, the Jesuit University of Guadalajara, and a member of the National System of Researchers, Level I. She studies the tensions between aesthetic practices, politics, and social action in contexts of violence, borders, and disappearances. She is a member of the international network Hemispheric Encounters and the International Network for the Study of the Gaze. She is also a member of the Intemperie working group. She is the co-author, with Rossana Reguillo, of the book *The Flight of the Fireflies*

Alicia Laguna

Alicia Laguna is a Scenic Artist, Curator, Manager, and Producer who trained at the University of Nuevo Leon, as well as with various directors including: Luis de Tavira, Ludwik Margules, José Luis Ibáñez. Alicia is the Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Teatro Línea de Sombra.

She has been the Co-Artistic Director, Manager, and Producer of the following works by Teatro Línea de Sombra: Amarillo, Baños Roma, Pequeños territorios en reconstrucción, Durango66, Filo de Caballo(s), and has been a creator with Tamara Cubas and Zuadd Atala on La Brisa. These productions have toured nationally and to more than 40 international festivals in 20 countries. Currently she is working with Uruguayan artist Tamara Cubas on a long-term project Sea of Silence, which opened at the Avignon Festival in 2024. She is also currently developing a new work with Mariana Blanco.