catana joy is the creative practice of Ana Catalina Vázquez Ramírez (she/her). Ana playfully inquires about the ancient and emerging stories a given time and place hold. She embodies the name joy in honor of her maternal lineage which carries the name Alegría (meaning happiness or joy). As someone uprooted from her homeland, this conscious embodiment of lineage in her work offers a way to connect with her Zapotec, Nahua, and European roots. Through this embodiment she’s able to enter into deeper communion with her ancestors and the lands from which they emerge. Ana’s favorite teachers are the more-than-human and she tends to gravitate toward environments where the human fabric is porous or absent. Ana is based at Arcosanti, an experimental city and project in central Arizona. She lives surrounded by the High Desert animate with Cottonwoods, Coyotes, volcanic rocks cloaked in lichen, ants, an ephemeral river and many more beings. Ana considers her practice to be one of building kinship and deep listening with body and mind to the wisdom a place holds. Her tools of exploration range from the “literal” informed by placed based research, to a more abstract realm nourished by a rich and cherished dream world. Through dreams and a trance-play state she’s able to converse with that which is often overlooked by more traditional tools of inquiry. Through her practice Ana aims to further stumble upon awe, a rooted kind of freedom, and joy that invites others to play along.