Kristel Faye Baldoz

Kristel Baldoz is a Filipina-American artist from Delano, California, home to the table grape strike. She was a 2019 EmergeNYC fellow at the Hemispheric Institute and artist-in-residence at Tisch/Danspace Residency. She is currently an artist-in-resident at the Jonah Bokaer Art Foundation | Chez Bushwick. Kristel creates performances as a form of abstract storytelling by merging movement, improvisation, text, and family history. Utilizing her dance background and family’s immigration stories as a substrate, she vacillates in and out of conventional gestures exploring and integrating other mediums and materials with movement. As a performer, she has worked with Reggie Wilson and Wilmer Wilson IV. As an arts administrator, she has supported the operation at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and Movement Research and project managed for Faustin Linyekula. She holds an MA in Arts Politics from New York University and a BA in Dance, Theater, and Performance Studies from UC Berkeley.

Visit Kristel's work here.

What drew to the MA Arts Politics Program?

I was interested in a critical and rigorous way of thinking about the intersections of art and policy. I wanted to dive into theory and find ways to use these ideas inside policy-making and other systematic spaces. Additionally, the program offers different career trajectories after graduation - you can be an artist, go off to get your PhD, or work with/start your own organization. I wanted the opportunity to keep these pathways open.