Author, researcher and transdisciplinary practitioner (Cuba – Spain)

Alessandra´s experience has been linked to writing, communication and creative design, understood as a broad fabric of experiences and narratives that arise from understanding the contexts and the people who inhabit them.

Her artwork is socially engaged and encompasses a wide range of media and formats, such as writing, performance, photography, film, and installation. Taking as a starting point ideas of proximity and interference, she is seduced by the activation of networks of people and places in her practice through the intersection of art with identity and gender, immigration, multiculturalism, environment, history and cultural heritage.

She has led the conceptualization, direction, planning, and execution of multicultural and interdisciplinary projects in Spain, Germany, Italy and Cuba. These initiatives, supported by institutions such as the Goethe Institute, Acción Cultural Española, Prince Claus Foundation, Akademie Schloss Solitude, KulturRegion Stuttgart, LAZIOcrea S.p.A., the German, Norwegian and Austrian embassies in Cuba, among others, are designed to create a positive and sustainable impact in vulnerable communities through a creative, fresh, diverse, and socially empowering approach.

During 2012-2020 she was invited to participate in Ibero-American theater initiatives such as Linha de Fuga (Portugal), Experimenta/Sur (Colombia), TUSP Public Readings Program, Dramaturgas (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil) and Panorama/Sur (Argentina).

Books of her authorship have been published by Ediciones UNION, Casa Editora Abril, Ediciones La Luz and Ediciones sinsentido.

Together with Karina Pino she founded The Trailer in 2020. This collective was born from the need to create interdisciplinary and collaborative projects between different artists, spaces and themes (most of them directly related to social issues and different communities).

Santiesteban has 5 years of experience developing initiatives in Nuclear City: a community at risk of exclusion located next to the failed project of Juraguá Nuclear Power Plant (Cienfuegos, Cuba). In 2022 The Trailer developed Juraguá, the path of the blue waters: an artistic, community and environmental creation project which addressed the ecological risks of the construction of a hazardous waste dumpster in the former plant.

She is currently developing a creative process on social integration, cultural stereotypes and personal and collective memory, based on the migration and exile experiences of Latin American women in and around the city of Stuttgart. Also she works on individual projects (such as the platforms One nuclear action and All I have is a river) and collaborates with different artists.

Alessandra is a dynamic professional, organized, detail-oriented and always ready to listen to others. She is passionate about how words and images play an essential role in the definition and visual architecture of any project. The combination of theory and practice from studies in Journalism, Dramaturgy, Fine Arts, Graphic and Web Design has provided her with skills of autonomy, creativity, adaptability and leadership, as well as the ability to learn and collaborate with teams from diverse areas, backgrounds and cultures.