On September 16, cultural preservationist and archivist Djali Brown-Cepeda shares the story behind NuevaYorkinos, a digital archive and multimedia project dedicated to preserving and sharing the stories of New York City’s Latino and Caribbean communities. Through community submissions, NuevaYorkinos uses personal family photos and narratives to celebrate the cultural richness of the barrios and diasporas that helped shape the city.

Launched in 2019, the digital archive has collected over 1,000 stories and 2,500 visuals and has been featured in exhibitions throughout NYC. In this talk, Brown-Cepeda will discuss the project’s origins, her motivations, and her ongoing commitment to cultural preservation.

About the Speaker:

Djali Brown-Cepeda is a cultural preservationist, archivist, award-winning filmmaker, and writer from Lenapehoking (New York City) working within archival and visual media spaces to preserve Black and Brown stories. She is the founder and curator of NuevaYorkinos, a multimedia, digital archive that preserves New York City’s Latino and Caribbean culture and history through family photos and stories.

Since its inception in 2019, the archive has amassed over 1,000 stories and 2,500 visual mediums and has held exhibitions in museums such as El Museo del Barrio and MoMA PS1. A writer, Brown-Cepeda shares her work on Sweet Earth Flying, a self-published blog rooted in the tenets of reclamation, rematriation, remembrance, ancestral veneration, and traditional knowledge.