Trained in dance and improvisation, nibia pastrana santiago develops site-specific “choreographic events” to experiment with time and notions of territory, fiction, laziness, eroticism, and tourism. pastrana santiago utilizes site specificity and choreography as a lens to apprehend the organization and manifestation of things in the world in relation to time and space. Considering choreography as the organization of bodies in space and time, her choreographic events draw attention to the intersecting economic, political, and social dynamics contained in contested sites such as colonial monuments, ruined theaters, and places of mass circulation.

nibia pastrana santiago has an MFA in Dance with a Minor in Latina/o Studies from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a Postmaster's in Performance and Scenography Studies from a.pass, Belgium. Along with dance scholar Susan Homar, nibia is co-editor of the book Habitar lo imposible: Danza y experimentación en Puerto Rico (Editorial Beta-Local, 2023). The English edition, Inhabiting the Impossible: Dance and Experimentation in Puerto Rico, was published in 2023 by the University of Michigan Press. Recent exhibitions include Vaga Danza Agua (2023), El Deposito, Caguas, PR; Choreopolitics: Brendan Fernandes & nibia pastrana santiago (2022-2023), MASS MoCA, North Adams, US; cualesquiera (2019), Hidrante, San Juan, PR. Recent performances include “other islands originated in the ocean, but the island is also the origin, radical and absolute,” a borrowed phrase from Deleuze’s Desert Islands for this choreographic event (and yes, all of this is the title). (2024), Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, US; el agua era el cielo (2023), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, US; objetos indispuestos, inauguraciones suspendidas o finales inevitables para un casi-baile (2019), 2019 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, US.