Ixchel Tonāntzin Xōchitlzihuatl
Ixchel (formerly Christina Patiño Houle) is a prayer woman, culture shaper and peace strategist. She/ We/ They devotes their life force to the liberation of all beings across time and space. Her focus is to support people in remembering, serving and reconnecting to their first mother, the earth. She is committed to contributing to the co-evolution of the human species towards peaceful, sustainable futures. Her techniques include design justice, socially engaged art, emergent strategy, mindfulness, somatics indigenous wisdom, and community decolonization.
Ixchel is the founder / director of Xi’im Ek Balam (2023-present), co-founded (2018-2020) and led (2020-2023) the socially engaged art collective, LAS IMAGINISTAS (United States Artists, ArtPlace America’s National Creative Placemaking Grantees, Blade of Grass Fellows). She is a Soros Art Fellow (Land Memory and the Power of Art, 2023/24/ 25), a Narrative Arts Fellow (Center for Cultural Power and Opportunity Agenda 2023), and a recipient of the New York Foundation of the Arts Anonymous Was a Woman Environmental Arts grant and a Map Fund Grantee.
Ixchel trains and collaborates with indigenous communities throughout the Abayala (Maiza/ the Americas) including the Kichwa in the upper Ecuadorian Amazon (linage of the Gualinga family), the Maya Kiche (lineage of daykeeper Xochit Quetzalli), and Uto-Aztecans (Communidad Calli). Her projects focus on social and terrestrial acupuncture (collaborating with indigenous leaders who steward sacred sites). She was also the founding Executive Director for the immigration nonprofit, Voces Unidas (2018-2023), working along the US/ Mexico border to advance equity for immigrants. Ixchel leads land rematriation initiatives in the Rio Grande Valley and the Upper Ecuadorian Amazon.
Her writings have been published by the Ford Foundations Creative Futures platform (republished by the Smithsonian Asian American Magazine), Architecture Roundtable via the Architecture League of New York, Shelterforce, Grantmakers in the Arts and Nonprofit Quarterly. Her work has been written about in Forecast Public Art Review, Texas Architects and ArtPlace America’s Economic Development Field Scan. As a researcher she has led arts based and indigenous research projects with Third Space, and building communityWORKSHOP.
Ixchel is mixed race and mixed indigenous from Maiza (Uto-Aztecan from Northern Mexico) and Éire (Ireland). She holds a MFA from Columbia University (NY) and an EdM from Harvard (MA). She has trained in somatic practices (Somatica, 2023/ 24; Hakomi, Austin 2010), Buddhism (Kopan Monastery 2022 and 2023), Emergent Strategies (ESII 2019-2022) and Narrative Strategies (Race Forward Butterfly Lab 2020, Center for Cultural Power 2021-2023, and Opportunity Agenda Fellow 2023).
May her work be pleasing to all those who have come before working towards liberation and earth stewardship. May the qi of this work harmonize with frequencies of oneness. May all beings know love. May all beings feel peace. May all beings feel nourished. May all beings know rest.
May all beings be love. May all beings remember their nature of oneness. May all beings rshine brightly with light.