Today we’d like to introduce you to Aidyn Mancenido.
Hi Aidyn, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Much of my life has hinged on the question, “What if?” What if I could participate in the infinite, colorful expressions of life? What if there were no limits to who I could become?
Each chapter of my story has been written with incessant curiosity. From an early age, I learned the practice of imagining possibilities and defying risks, in part because of immigrant parents who taught me that frontiers exist not for containment, but rather, for crossing and creativity. So, I tackled one boundary after another to expand my scope of understanding of the world. In college, I challenged intellectual barriers and socially contrived “Truths.” Yet, my thirst for knowledge and experience demanded an even broader geographical reach, so I travelled to Spain as a Fulbright scholar to research the Roma’s experiences of life lived on the margins. I then pursued a doctoral degree in cultural anthropology to continue to indulge the question, “How else do others live?” Over the course of a decade, I cultivated the capacity to think critically about the complexities of the human experience, across a range of cultural realities around the world. I ultimately focused my research on the experience of immigrant and migrant feminists in Spain, and how they used creativity and art to advocate for their needs; how performance art could engender new possibilities.
Then, I crossed the proverbial mind-body divide, leaving the academic world of theories and mind-traps to explore and inhabit the fertile terrain of my body. I had abandoned my body too often, numb to insidious, capitalist ideas of exploitation and inadequacy. So, to reclaim authorship of my own story and advocate for the long-suppressed needs of my brown body, I became a performance artist. I used art to explore the power of self-expression and transformation. I completed an MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago at the age of 42, and went on to create artistic works exploring race, femininity, intimacy, and sexual violence.
I continue to craft my story in collaboration with the diversity of life around me, now working professionally as a personal anthropologist. I document lives through deep interviews and storytelling through my business, Kwento. I continue with a practice of curiosity to understand the richness and vastness of the human experience, one story at a time.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
There have definitely been bumps and hurdles along the way. For much of my professional life, I was a single mom attempting to develop her personal and professional aspirations, while raising a daughter. This was especially tricky for the six years I chose to focus on my artistic practice, given that the arts sector receives inadequate structural support, leaving artists including myself, in perpetual hustle-mode, and enduring pendulum swings between feast and famine, hubris and self-doubt. But being an artist was a long-time dream! And to finally realize it and spend each day indulging my creativity and engaging my intuition was nothing short of magical. But bringing in enough income to support my daughter and I was a daily reality-check. I eventually went back to full-time work in order to feel some semblance of financial ease and stability. Though I couldn’t sustain living and working as an artist for a longer period of time, I have no regrets for trying. I crossed that seemingly insurmountable barrier between possibility and reality. And not only did I realize what I had thought was impossible, more importantly, I accessed an exquisite side of myself: the side that knows how to invoke the muses; how to trust in the power of deep presence; how to create something out of nothing.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Kwento?
After getting laid off from work in the climate-change, non-profit sector, I knew I was again given an opportunity to create something out of nothing. So I founded Kwento in 2025. Through Kwento, which means “story” in the Filipino language, I interview people, uncover the threads and poignant moments of their lived experiences, and transform their memories and stories into beautifully written narratives. My clients include aging parents, grandparents, partners, professionals, and organizations. We all have stories to tell, but not necessarily the time or capacity to document them in a meaningful and lasting way. I offer my skills in interviewing, analysis, and creative expression so that others can share the unique imprints they’ve left on the world. Having worked with people from a wide range of cultures across the globe over the past two decades as a cultural anthropologist, I’ve learned to perceive the deeper currents within every story. I can see the interplay between individual lives and the broader social, cultural, and historical contexts that shape them, revealing not only who people are, but how they leave their mark on the world. And as an artist and writer, I can connect deeply with the essence of an individual’s or collective’s journey and weave it into a compelling and evocative narrative.
I offer three different packages that vary in the number of hours of interview, and length of narrative. I conduct interviews in 1-hour sessions, either in person or on Zoom. Each interview session is an opportunity for my client and I to travel together; to move through, with fluidity and grace, constructions of past, present and future.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kwentome.com
- Other: https://www.amancenido.com
