Photo Credit: Mike Esperanza

the mandatory bio

Justina Kamiel Grayman, PhD is an artist and community psychology PhD who studies practices and processes for designing and building beautiful communities of deep freedom, truth, and connection.  With a BA in Psychology from Stanford University and a PhD in Psychology and Social Intervention from New York University, Justina’s studies have always centered on understanding how we communicate with others to build power, connect, and mobilize. For example, during her final undergraduate year at Stanford, she created a psychology-based magazine creation program for middle schoolers that allowed them to connect to each other by sharing their emotional and community concerns. During her PhD at NYU, she collaborated with over 30 New York City community organizers over four years to study and reflect on the strategies they used to build relationships with and mobilize people. 

Realizing art and movement are communication tools to build power, connect, and mobilize, her original artworks are efforts to mobilize people. Justina’s dance films Woman Versus (2016) and Black Man in America (2018), both of which were recognized by American Dance Festival’s Movies by Movers, explored the mobilization of women and Black men, respectively. For the premiere of Black Man in America, she and her collaborator Vance “Johnny Hobbes” Brown led a celebration of Black men, a magical event where families and friends honored the Black men in their lives through public acknowledgment, dance performances, and conversation. Black Man in America received tremendous community support, raising over $21K for the project from over 400 supporters. While making her own art, Justina started coaching artists and arts professionals in how to design deeply connecting and liberating experiences.  Justina is currently developing Raw Movement, which brings people together to experiment with co-creating spaces of deep connection, home, family, emotional safety through collective (movement) practice.    

Overall, Justina’s work is at the intersection of education, art, psychology, community organizing, and “spirituality”. Her ultimate mission is to collaboratively create / transform entire communities’ institutions with deep, divine connection – particularly using movement, art, and design (and especially in the darkness).  Justina’s creative and organizing practice can be summarized by The Raw Movement Framework, an approach to inquiring about how we co-create spaces of deep connection, home, family, emotional safety. All of Justina’s work is about creating or uncovering deep connection in times of grief, suffering, conflict, and transition.  

a more human backstory: in my childhood i awoke every morning on the bottom of a bunk bed i shared with my twin brother. i love him more than anyone, ever. i also peed that bed a lot. on Sundays, i would fall asleep as we drove over the bridge to get to our fundamentalist Southern Baptist church we visited 3x/week. in the parking lot,we saw trucks donning confederate flags. typical. my parents spoke to me mostly in English with the exception of five Spanish phrases: “good morning,” “let’s go,” “sit down,” “stop talking” and “good night.” i was raised by Black panamanian immigrants. they taught me everything. except Spanish.

i did good in school but not great at friends. did so good at school, that i know that that word should be “well.” after stanford, i realized i was Black, that America is messed up, and reality is doomed. my childhood anxiety was proven understandable. (i had a crippling fear of death as a kid/young adult).

having done WELL in school, i thought i should keep doing that, like, forever. so i went for a PhD (psychology). i moved to NYC at 22. and i was sad and lonely. because i was sad and lonely, i decided to dance. my anxiety completely disappeared – no, it didn’t, but it severely decreased and i no longer believed we were all doomed. i became addicted to dancing. so much so that i got into a professional dance company, where i was paid $16/hour. there i had the opportunity to make my first dance film. then i got fired (i mean LET GO) from that job. obviously forgetting i had sworn i wouldn’t make another dance film due to the intense and uncomfortable stress of it, i made my next dance film the next year.

let’s backtrack one moment so that the following paragraph will make sense. this is because i do not desire to edit this into the above story, as making sense out of my life story is a complete headache. while I was in my PhD program (Psychology & Social Intervention), i became intensely interested in principles of community empowerment and ways of rallying people to create positive change (my dissertation examined community organizers’ strategies).

at some point prior to creating this website, i finally realized i was an artist (i was the last to know), and i finally realized i did not want to study community organizers but i wanted to be a community organizer. the work that i do uses movement, art, and principles of psychology to co-create spaces of deep connection. okay, whew. if you read all of that, wow. high-five and i appreciate you! and if you want to learn more about me (as it relates to my current work with Raw Movement), click here or follow me on Instagram. 

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