2025 ACTivate Resident

Jaina Cipriano is an experiential designer, filmmaker and photographer exploring the emotional toll of religious and romantic entrapment. Her worlds communicate with our neglected inner child and are informed by explosive colors, elevated play, and the existence of light in the dark.

Jaina writes and directs award winning short films that wrestle with the complicated path of healing. Her second short, ‘Trauma Bond’ is a dreamy, coming of age thriller that explores what happens when we attempt to heal deep wounds with quick fixes. In 2023 Trauma Bond took home the grand prize at the Lonely Seal International Film Festival.

Jaina’s photographic works are fabricated by hand in her Lowell studio. Working with Jaina is often described as cathartic and playful. Her photographic work has been shown at the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Photographic Resource Center/Boston, PhotoPlace Gallery VT, Medium San Diego among others.

She is the founder of Finding Bright Studios, a design company specializing in set design for music videos, immersive spaces and public art. Jaina is the owner and executive director of the longstanding Arlington International Film Festival. She has collaborated with GRRL HAUS, Boston Art Review, and was a Boston Fellow for the Mass Art Creative Business Incubator, a finalist in EforAll Merrimack Valley and was a participant in the city of Boston’s Un-monument augmented reality workshop.

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Project Statement

During her ACTivate Residency, Jaina Cipriano will partner with 2025 ACTivate Resident Olivia Moon for a week-long ACTivate Residency in the BCA Cyclorama. Participating dancers in the residency will be asked to pull from experimental practices of contemporary dance to create improvisational structures within pole dance.