About the Lab

Pataki is a 14 day creative lab that provides a spacious and restorative environment for participants to develop a project, question, or area of study of their choosing. The lab slows the pace of engagement, allowing learning, reflection, and creative work to unfold without pressure to produce.

Participants take part in facilitated sessions with artists, researchers, curators, healers, and cultural workers working across Salvador’s artistic, academic, and cultural landscape. These encounters are balanced with time for independent work, informal exchange, and rest.

Days move between shared sessions, individual inquiry, and unstructured time for independent exploration.

The rhythm of the lab is set to the tone of collective gathering, supporting the development of ideas that nurture the creative practice.

Pataki is for Black, Indigenous, and Queer artists, researchers, and cultural workers who share a commitment to Black and Indigenous worldbuilding and see Bahia as a place to learn from, build relationships with, and be changed by.

Participants often arrive with a project, question, or area of focus they wish to deepen, alongside an interest in how ideas shift through proximity, conversation, and shared experience.

Previous areas of inquiry have included somatic and movement based practices, ancestral and lineage research, visual and sound based work, instrument building, and other approaches that treat land, body, and memory as sources of knowledge.

The lab is especially resonant for those drawn to Bahia’s geographic and cultural richness and who seek forms of engagement with people and practices that are difficult to access through independent travel.

Pataki is not a residency and it is not a cultural immersion experience. It is a research and practice lab grounded in Bahia’s historical, social, and spiritual richness, and at the same time, the responsibilities that come with entering a place shaped by colonization, racial capitalism, and ongoing anti-Black violence.

Participants engage in Salvador as a living place. The city is not a backdrop or a source of material to be taken up and resolved. The lab presses on how questions are asked, what methods are possible, and what kinds of work can emerge through cultural humility.

Pataki begins from the understanding that European and United States American tourism has often centered its own comfort and imagination as the primary measure of exchange. Rather than arriving with a solution or a fantasy, participants are asked to remain attentive to how their presence moves through existing social terrain, and where it may reproduce the very structures it hopes to unsettle.

• A 14 day shared lab shaped by study, relationship, rest, and time spent in place

• A gentle daily rhythm that balances facilitated sessions, independent research and creative practice, and collective reflection

• Engagements with artists, researchers, professors, curators, and cultural workers working across Salvador’s artistic, academic, and cultural landscape

• A three day group visit to a nearby city of historical significance, with time in nature and space for reflection

• Time intentionally set aside for rest, grounding, spiritual connection, and integration

• Shared housing with personal accommodations to support intimacy, care, and collective presence

• Shared meals, informal conversations, and moments of celebration woven throughout the experience

• Flexibility within the structure, allowing the lab to respond to the energy of the group and the context of the day

• Program fee: USD 3,000

• Includes shared housing with personal accommodations for the duration of the lab

• Includes transportation to and from the airport upon arrival and departure

• Includes facilitated sessions and engagements with artists, researchers, professors, curators, and cultural workers

• Includes shared breakfasts during the lab

• Includes one two night group trip outside of the city, with lodging, transportation, dinner, and rest-centered programming

• Airfare to and from Brazil is not included

• A limited number of partial scholarships are available to support access

• Applications are open to Black, Indigenous, and Queer artists, researchers, and cultural workers working across disciplines and geographies

• The application invites you to share a brief statement about your practice, interests, and what draws you to Pataki at this moment

• Applicants are also asked to outline a project, question, or area of study they would like to explore during the lab

• Selected applicants are invited to a short conversation as part of the process

• Invitations are extended on a rolling basis following the application deadline

• Session I and Session II applications are due

  February 23, 2026