In Partnership with Out Innerspace
Summer Studio Artist Residency 2026
Artist in Residence
Salomé Nieto and elika mojtabaei مجتبایی الیکا
In residence Summer 2026 at Q7
Meet Salomé Nieto and elika mojtabaei مجتبایی الیکا
Salomé Nieto is a Mexican-born, Vancouver-based choreographer and performer whose work lives at the intersection of Butoh, ritual practice, and feminist inquiry. For over three decades, she has cultivated a practice rooted in transformation—of body, memory, and the unseen narratives carried through cultural lineage.
Trained in Mexico City and profoundly shaped by her long-term collaboration with Kokoro Dance, Nieto weaves spirituality, Indigeneity, and interdisciplinary exchange into performances that invite audiences into states of heightened presence. She was awarded the 2017 Choreographic Award by the Vancouver International Dance Festival in recognition of her solo work. Nieto is the co-founder of pataSola dance and the creator of numerous solo and collaborative works presented across the Americas, Asia, and Europe. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Simon Fraser University, and her artistic path remains grounded in mentorship, collaboration, and community.
elika mojtabaei مجتبایی الیکا is an Iranian-born writer, costume designer, and dramaturg working in
performance, film, and installation art.
Through colour, texture, surrealist gestures, and the poetry of the unsaid, her work interrogates how
language and apparel have been weaponized to marginalize, control, and erase. The movement and
stillness of bodies, the power and limitations of fabric, and the joys and failures of words inspire her.
She wrote, designed and produced the short film “a film about a uterus”. Her poetry has appeared in
SAD Mag. She has collaborated with vAct, Jin-me Yoon, Theatre Conspiracy, Company 605, Alexis
Fletcher, Studio 58 and others. Her installation/performance TechniCowlour was exhibited at Centre
A Gallery. She is currently developing a new play, Draw Me a Home, based on children’s
experiences of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), exploring the interconnectivity of oral, visual, and
haptic storytelling. elika co-leads the experimental multidisciplinary company The Biting School and
co-founded No Small Feat Collective.
About the work
Refusal to Disappear is a research-driven collaboration between Mexican-born butoh dancer Salomé Nieto and Iranian-born costume designer elika mojtabaei inspired by the paintings of María Izquierdo and the Woman Life Freedom (WLF) movement.
The artistic and cultural rationale for this project lies in placing historical and contemporary feminist struggles from different parts of the world in dialogue. Through bridging these contexts, the project reveals a continuum rather than isolated moments of oppression, highlighting women’s fight for autonomy as an urgent and ongoing global struggle. Garments and the body become simultaneous sites of inquiry.
The project will centre parallel strands of visual, political, and embodied research translated into choreography and costume. We will engage in visual and contextual conversations around:
- selected works by Izquierdo (Mexican surrealist female painter contemporary of Frida Kahlo), focusing on colour, spatial tension, symbolism, and her representations of women; and
- the WLF movement, with a focus on embodied protest, gesture, clothing, and collective presence.
elika and I will co-lead this project with costumes and movement playing equal parts. A core activity will be the creation of experimental surrealist costume prototypes. They will restrict, conceal, distort, transform and reveal the dancer’s body, actively shaping how movement is generated. Costume functions as a material force that actively produces movement and meaning alongside the dance.
Co-creator and performer: Salome Nieto
Co-creator and Textile designer: elika mojtabaei
Set design: Emily Dotson
Lighting design: Alexandra Caprara
Dramaturge: Nancy Tam
Follow the artist:
Photography credits: Paul Craig, Nancy, Aryo Khakpour
Among a competitive pool of applications, Salomé Nieto and elika mojtabaei was awarded residency space at New Works within the 2026-27 season. New Works strives to build process-focused artist-lead residency space that is responsive to the creative’s need.
A New Works residency is a safe space for creative risk taking.
This creation studio residency at Q7 is in partnership with Out Innerspace.
