Crystle Dino, a Pinay Chicago native, is guided by her passions in the visual, performance, and healing arts, which are rooted in her community and cultural upbringing.  She unearths herstory and investigates time, place, and relation by incorporating elements of the body, participation, and memory, and by creating movement using repetition in patterns immersed in personal stories, collective experiences, and folklore.  She embodies her freedom by training in Filipino Martial Arts and dancing, and uses Chicago House culture concepts of freedom, love, and empowerment, as well as Babaylan consciousness as both the foundation and impetus for her “Folk Art Therapist” identity.  As a folk art therapist, she works in Chicago community settings to hold spaces of empowerment and critical reflection through mind/body awareness and attention to cultural intersections while co-creating a paradigm of care meaningful for her community.

Art Therapy is a Practice; it is Personal, and it is Political.

Crystle Dino

As a folk art therapist, performance and visual artist, dancer, cultural worker, and youth development worker, I specialize in working with people in community settings using art-based practices with the intention of fostering well-being, body/mind connection, and re-establishing a sense of safety and trust within one’s body. I use a decolonization framework with a Pinayist/Womanist/Feminist lens as I co-create spaces of healing and re-membering. My foundation and impetus for my practice is rooted in the concepts of Chicago House culture and the Babaylan consciousness.

My continuing body of work “Re-membering Carefully” highlights my process in exploring agency, historical and personal Filipina/Pilipinx narratives, embodiment, and the complexities of intersectionality. I have presented my Art Therapy cumulative grad work entitled “Liberating Narratives of the Chi-Pinay/Pilipinx through Kapwa-Motivated Arts Practices” at the 2019 Filipino Mental Health and Well-Being Summit in Los Angeles, California. I also founded FMA Freedom. Movemeant. Alignment. Chicago, which I lead body-based awareness exercises in combination with Filipino Martial Arts as a tool to build community defense.

I am an alumna of the Art Therapy and Counseling Master’s program at the School of the Institute of Chicago. I draw primarily from the relational-cultural model, Pilipina/Kapwa lens of Bayanihan spirit, and somatic awareness to guide people in reconnecting with their internal sources, as well as to re-member within a community setting. Helping people find personal meaning in their power and agency is at the core of my practice combining creative arts expression, movement, performance, ritual, and Filipino Martial Arts.

Ultimately, I believe that acknowledging the presence and strengths and deepening the connections that already exist within will guide participants to the path of restoration and alignment. Freedom. Movemeant. Alignment. is an extension of this passion.