What We Choose to Save: Rocío Salceda to Speak at Gel 2026

Repair Café El Barrio founder Rocío Salceda will speak at Gel 2026 on Friday, October 2, in Accord, New York. Her talk, What We Choose to Save, brings together her work as an artist and fashion designer, her experience growing up in Spain, and the story behind Repair Café El Barrio.

Rocío grew up as Spain was becoming a democracy. Older generations around her carried memories of the Civil War and dictatorship, while young people found new ways to express themselves through art, music, cinema, and fashion. Living between those worlds sparked a question that would follow her into her creative work: Who gets to tell us who we are?

As an artist in New York, Rocío began searching for ways to portray a person without showing their face. She became interested in what a conventional portrait might leave out: a person’s history, choices, relationships, and possibilities. Later, she taught herself dressmaking, discovering another way to explore what we reveal, what we protect, and how we make ourselves visible to others.

Moving into Artspace PS109 in East Harlem gave Rocío room to make things and connect with her neighbors. There, she began sharing the skills she had learned with her hands. In 2022, she founded Repair Café El Barrio, where volunteers now work alongside community members to fix belongings, share practical knowledge, and keep useful things in use.

“We repair objects there,” Rocío says in her talk. “But the culture of repair, for me, is also about what happens between people while we do it.”

At Gel, Rocío will reflect on the thread connecting these parts of her life and work: an interest in people, the identities we inherit and make for ourselves, and what becomes possible when we work together.

Gel is a multidisciplinary gathering founded and hosted by Mark Hurst. This year’s conference brings together artists, technologists, and community builders to explore more human ways of creating and living.

Learn more about Gel 2026 and read Chronogram’s article about the conference.