the letter

To our fellow artists, storytellers, and dreamers,

Today, we write to you not just with an announcement, but with an invitation.

After years of moving between spaces—between performance, directing, playwriting, arts administration, and exploring how art can be a tool for community healing, cultural memory, and social change — we are stepping into a new chapter that feels like home in the deepest sense.

We’re proud to announce the launch of BORDERLANDS: a new artistic collective devoted to radical new works by artists who live in the in-between.

BORDERLANDS is more than a name. It is a declaration. A reclamation. A recognition that some of us have always lived in the hyphen—between cultures, between races, between languages, between histories. That the stories we carry don’t fit into neat categories. That our art is forged not in spite of this complexity, but because of it.

We are the children of diaspora and duality. We are the ones whose identities are often called “complicated,” whose work defies genre, whose voices have too often been pushed to the margins. And yet, we know that the most powerful work—the work that shakes something loose in the world—comes from the edge. From the in-between. From the BORDERLANDS.

This collective is the culmination of everything we believe in. And we're building it intentionally–together. We are not only co-founders of this collective, but also life partners and longtime creative collaborators. What brought us together as people is also what unites us in our work: a belief in the power of art to transform space, a shared refusal to compromise our complexity, and a hunger to build something that doesn't just include the in-between—but centers it.

Together, we've realized this: we don't need to assimilate to be seen. We need to build spaces that see us fully. BORDERLANDS will be that space.

It will be a home for new work that centers fluidity, intersectionality, and transformation. For stories that don't tidy themselves up for the mainstream. For artists whose perspectives have been historically sidelined, erased, or misunderstood.

We will incubate, develop, and produce works that are bold, multidisciplinary, and deeply personal.

We will amplify voices from across borders: geographic, cultural, and imaginative.

We will experiment. We will question. We will hold space.

And we will do it in community.

This collective isn’t just ours—it’s yours. It’s a place for all of us who have felt too complex for simple definitions. For those of us who want to build an artistic future that isn’t just inclusive, but expansive.

So to the artists, funders, collaborators, and curious souls reading this:

We invite you to dream with us. To build with us.

To step into the BORDERLANDS.

With radical hope,