About iara raquel
iara raquel is the Inaugural Artist Engagement Resident of ArtHouse Collective. During her residency iara focused on creativity, collaboration, and healing with the intention of crafting her first musical album about her experience healing into empowerment. She also continued to write her screenplay, connect to the earth, learn spiritual coping mechanisms, face creature’s, and the ego, and engaged in conversations about hopes and dreams to build a positive future.
Find out more about iara and her residency on our social media links below!
Bella Meditations
Throughout iara raquel’s time at the residency, she produced and hosted private and public meditations via the Arthouse Collective social media platforms and at monthly “Luna Nueva” events co-hosted with Linden Dea, a local multimedia artist in Syracuse, NY.
At the “Luna Nueva” events, participants moved through meditations, intention setting marked with the New Moon, binding, and sharing pieces of art that each person created.
Here, iara raquel speaks and shares some lyrics over zoom to the co-written song, “We Are One,” with Nashville musician, Daena, and Boston orchestra, Lyrica, at Lyrica’s Winter Solstice virtual benefit festival.
Check out each artist’s personal pages below.
Co-Writing music about Unity
While at the residency, iara raquel had been busy creating new music independently and with collaborators in Nashville, South Carolina, Mexico, and Boston. Iara was fortunate enough to be connected to Lyrica, a profoundly talented Boston-based orchestra dedicated to providing young emerging artists the special opportunity of performing and composing alongside some of the country’s most esteemed and respected musicians. With Lyrica, they are collectively crafting a song called, “We Are One.”
Below is an excerpt of iara raquel’s speech during the event:
“2020 has been a transformative and horrific wake-up call to the divide in our country and in the world. And that “wake up call” is a privileged statement, because it is something that as a white Latina, I do not have to face as much oppression as my black and POC neighbors. . . Though this song was birthed out of the marches this summer to honor victims of police brutality and in an effort to speak to my silent white family members, it rides much deeper to the core of humanity: we all came from the same earth, which is a beautiful flow of masculine and feminine energy. Everything is a choice. Our thoughts, beliefs, actions, subconscious actions. This life is up to us and more easily accessible to those of us born into privilege. Each choice we make can and has an effect on the lives of others, known or unknown. So it’s important to be kind to all including ourselves, get educated, ask questions instead of assuming someone’s life, and work in the community where and when you can. Stop putting a blind eye to the reality of our decisions and how they affect our community, ourselves, and how we speak to ourselves, which is quite a root of so much fear and hate. At the core of this song: love is the greatest. It is up to us to have the uncomfortable conversations, mess up sometimes, and step up in our global community for the benefit of the future of this planet and humanity. We are one.”