A practice shaped by culture, memory, and language
My cultural practice work moves across cultural research, writing, language, performance, cultural memory, public humanities, and international exchange. Over time, I have become increasingly interested in what remains after an experience, the stories, objects, gestures, languages, relationships, and questions that people carry forward. TAWA Practice grew from that interest. It gives me a place to connect earlier experience with new inquiry, develop work in progress, write creatively, and explore how knowledge moves across generations, places, and forms.
About me
Monica Flores is a writer, researcher, and cultural practitioner whose interdisciplinary work brings together cultural research, public humanities, language, performance, international exchange, and creative practice. Her experience includes cultural and educational programs connected to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, Division of Cultural History, the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), Study of the U.S. Institutes (SUSI), Andean folkloric dance, and community and arts collaborations.
Her work has developed across disciplines and settings, but repeatedly returns to questions of culture, memory, language, identity, narrative, and the ways knowledge is shared and carried forward. She holds a B.A. in Spanish Language and Literature from George Mason University, with minors in Latin American Studies and Dance, and completed additional graduate study in Spanish literature and linguistics. She later earned an M.S. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University, further shaping an approach grounded in analysis, reflective practice, dialogue, and attention to how people interpret experience, navigate relationships, and make meaning.
Her additional training includes a Professional Development Certificate in Cultural Diplomacy and Conflict Zone Mediation from the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin, a Mediation Theory and Skills Certificate from Central European University in Budapest, and a Mediation and Conflict Resolution Skills Certificate from the Roanoke Conflict Resolution Center. Her continued study of languages, including Quechua, Italian, and French, is part of an ongoing engagement with language as both a cultural form and a way of knowing.
A PRACTICE IN MOTION
TAWA Practice is the space where my cultural, research, and creative work meet. Its name comes from tawa, meaning “four” in Quechua, and from the broader TAWA framework of Transform, Align, Weave, and Author. Here, those ideas come together through memory, language, archives, writing, performance, research, and artistic inquiry.
My practice is concerned with how culture is remembered, carried, interpreted, and transformed. I am interested in the forms through which knowledge moves: community archives and publications, stories and language, cultural objects, embodied memory, folkloric dance and performance, creative writing, and relationships across generations.
I approach research and creative practice as interconnected. An archive can open a question; a performance can hold memory that was never written down; a language can carry ways of seeing; a remembered place or object can become the beginning of a story. My current work includes research on Andean cultural memory and community archives, creative writing in Spanish rooted in memory, and Quechua language and cultural resources, alongside broader inquiry into how cultural knowledge is transmitted and reimagined.
I use the word practice deliberately. Research, writing, language learning, cultural documentation, and creative work are not only finished outputs; they are ways of paying attention, asking questions, making, revising, reflecting, and learning. TAWA Practice is a record of that work in motion—both what is being created and the process through which it takes shape.
Because the practice moves across disciplines and forms, collaboration can also take many forms. I am interested in working with artists and cultural practitioners, writers and researchers, community-based initiatives, and academic or cultural institutions on projects that may include research, writing, cultural documentation, program development, exhibitions, public humanities initiatives, educational experiences, or other forms of cultural interpretation and exchange. A collaboration might begin with an archive, a story, a language, a performance, a collection, a research question, or simply an idea that has not yet found its form.
Cultural Heritage | Cultural Diplomacy | Performance and Embodied Knowledge | Cultural Writing & Storytelling | Language