Reese Fernandez
(they/them)
is a writer / director / performer / producer on Tongva and Kizh land in Long Beach, CA. As a gender-fluid and genre-fluid Pilipinx-American artist, they explore themes of identity in the diaspora, intergenerational healing, re-indigenization and embodiment. As a movement teacher, they aim to help others tell their stories and feel good in their bodies.
The emphasis of Reese’s work is to reimagine futures rooted in the indigenous Pilipinx philosophy of kapwa: an intuitive sense of oneness with everything beyond us individually, including our communities and the lands that we inhabit. They build these connections through the written word, dance, filmmaking, theater, drag, and any other outlet that feels right.
Reese utilizes different modes of storytelling to draw attention to oppressive systems and their symptoms (including but not limited to the prevailing ISMs and phobias of ableism, classism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia), with an emphasis on the insidious root cause of colonization. They believe that empathy and an understanding of our histories is crucial to recognizing how we have arrived where we are today; and they use ancestral futurism to imagine more expansive possibilities for tomorrow.
Beyond their art, Reese has professional experience in nonprofit development with a specialization in grant and communications management, and studied Geography at the University of California, Berkeley.