Web: shared-rivers.org
Instagram: @shared_rivers
Linktree: linktr.ee/shared_rivers
Bios
One-liner. Maya Godoy (they) is the post-disciplinary weaver co-founder of Shared Rivers, a collective working to de/mystify kinship via the confluence of art, ecology, music, and gastronomy.
Artist bio, short (~65 words) Maya Godoy (they) is an artist, ecologist, and educator, and a co-founder of Shared Rivers, a collective de/mystifying kinship through waterways. They are an otter researcher and advocate with the IUCN Otter Specialist Group, a musician and producer, and the maker of {r}Evolving Kinship, a data-art project that turns DNA and deep time into personal kinship trees. Maya believes that everyone can be a naturalist.
Artist bio, medium (~130 words) Maya Godoy (they) is an artist, ecologist, and educator, and a co-founder of Shared Rivers, a collective de/mystifying kinship through waterways. They are an otter researcher and advocate with the IUCN Otter Specialist Group, with fieldwork that has followed otters across New York, Mexico, Lebanon, and Pakistan. As a musician and producer they record as riverotterradio, blending eco-acoustic field recordings with trans-cultural instrumentation. Their digital work, including the data-art project {r}Evolving Kinship, takes science and tools that have been gatekept behind paywalls and inside labs and makes them open, playful, and shared. Across solidarity events in Brooklyn, East LA, and Mexico City, Maya has moved money to relief in Congo, Sudan, Tigray, Palestine, Haiti, and beyond. Maya believes everyone can be a naturalist, and connect to land and water.
Artist statement
My work tries to de/mystify the science and the systems that usually keep people at arm’s length from the living world. I am drawn to the more-than-human, to the idea that we are kin with the species around us rather than separate from them, and to taking tools that tend to live behind paywalls or inside labs and making them open, playful, and shared. Whether it is a phylogenetic tree, an enrichment study, a meal, or a dance, I want the work to leave people feeling more related to the places and creatures they live with, and more able to act on that relation.
About Shared Rivers (boilerplate)
Shared Rivers boilerplate, one-line Shared Rivers is a collective of artists, ecologists, and educators de/mystifying kinship through waterways.
Shared Rivers boilerplate, short (~55 words) Shared Rivers is a collective of artists, ecologists, and educators de/mystifying kinship through waterways. Through its CONFLUENCES series, the collective turns food, music, and ecological storytelling into gatherings that double as fundraisers for humanitarian and environmental causes, while its Global Confluence Lab carries the fieldwork, mapping, and digital art behind the work.
Shared Rivers boilerplate, medium (~95 words) Shared Rivers is a collective of artists, ecologists, and educators de/mystifying kinship through waterways. Co-founded by Maya Godoy and Melat Hagos, it treats rivers not as borders or resources to be drained, but as living connectors of people, histories, and ecosystems. Its flagship CONFLUENCES series pairs a place with a cause, from an Ethiopian and Mexican supper funding Tigray relief to a Brooklyn dancefloor funding Congo. Alongside the events, the Global Confluence Lab does the collective’s research in the open, from otter fieldwork and species mapping to bioinformatics and data art, on what they name Unceded River Otter Land.
Fast facts
- Founded: March 18, 2022. (proto-Shared Rivers started in Los Angeles in 2019 with the “Communal Soul” festival in Boyle Heights.)
- Co-founders: Maya Godoy and Melat Hagos
- Team: About 20 core members in 8+ cities
- Based: Brooklyn, NY. Los Angeles, CA. Mexico City, MX.
- Active in: New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City with fieldwork and research reaching Lima, Albania, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Lebanon, and Pakistan
- Disciplines: art, ecology, music, gastronomy, education, and data / bioinformatics
- Flagship work: CONFLUENCES event series and the Global Confluence Lab research space
- Impact: dozens of solidarity events raising thousands of dollars for relief in Congo, Sudan, Tigray, Palestine, Haiti, and Yemen
- Languages: programming and events run mainly in English and Spanish but occasionally: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Hindi-Urdu, Albanian.
- Selected partners: Axolotl Museum (Mexico City), the IUCN SSC Otter Specialist Group, DJ-Musician-Artists collectives, and community groups and venues across the US and Global South.
- Online: shared-rivers.org. ig: @shared_rivers. linktr.ee/shared_rivers
- Support: Fractured Atlas (fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/shared-rivers-confluences)
Project one-sheets
{r}Evolving Kinship
Data art and bioinformatics · 2026 · shared-rivers.org/2026/05/15/revolving-kinship/
A request-based artwork that turns DNA and deep time into personal “kinship trees,” showing how closely you are related to the species you live beside. {r}Evolving Kinship takes biological systematics, usually treated as cold and rigid, and rebuilds it as a warm map of relation. A visitor names a species they feel close to and receives a phylogenetic tree that places them and their chosen kin on a shared evolutionary timeline, keyed to standard taxonomy but carrying common names and the stories communities tell about each species. The pilot maps the urban species of Yaanga, the Tongva name for the Los Angeles basin, with a Goat Farm edition in development for Atlanta. A coming version adds sonification, turning evolutionary distance into sound. It runs on open tools so anyone can request a tree.
CONFLUENCES
Event series · music, gastronomy, ecology · 2024 to present
The collective’s flagship gatherings, where a meal, a DJ set, and ecological storytelling become a fundraiser for a specific cause. EtioMex blended Ethiopian and Mexican cooking with an East African set in Mexico City for Tigray relief. Perreo4Congo brought Latin American and Afro-diasporic DJs to Brooklyn for Congo, with later editions widening to Puerto Rico and Palestine. Sonibrijes and Carnaval Solidário carried the format into new rooms. The events read as warm and danceable on the surface and pointed underneath, raising money while widening who feels invited into ecology and solidarity.
Otterhood: An Enrichment Study
Research and writing · 2025
A public-facing study gathering Maya’s research on otter enrichment, welfare, and conservation. Otters are a bioindicator species, so their health reads the health of a river. The work sits beside Maya’s place in the IUCN otter specialist community and the collective’s wider otter fieldwork across New York, Mexico, Lebanon, and Pakistan.
Botanical Database
Open digital project · ecology · 2026 · Mexico City
An open, searchable plant database built on accessible tools and embedded straight into the Shared Rivers site. It grew out of fieldwork in Mexico City as a way to keep botanical records legible and shared rather than locked in a spreadsheet. It runs on a Postgres backend with views embedded into the website, the same open approach the collective now uses across its digital work, and doubles as a teaching tool and a seed for future mapping.
Global Confluence Lab
Research and education · 2025 to present
The collective’s open research space, where fieldwork, mapping, bioinformatics, and digital art feed the events and draw from them in turn. The lab holds the research threads behind the projects and shares them through a series called the Knowledge Slurry. It treats research as something to open up rather than gatekeep, in keeping with the collective’s interest in the anti-professionalization of science.
Vjosa Quest
Research and event · international · 2025 · Albania
Fieldwork and an eco-liberation workshop along the Vjosa, one of Europe’s last wild rivers. Vjosa Quest brought Maya’s otter research and the collective’s land-back conversations to Albania, asking how people can resist alienation from each other and from the more-than-human world. The workshop ran for all ages and across languages, in the collective’s usual mix of the serious and the playful.
Selected works
- 2026 · {r}Evolving Kinship · data art / bioinformatics
- 2026 · Botanical Database · open digital project · Mexico City
- 2026 · Lontra in Mexico · otter research / digital
- 2025 · Sonibrijes · event · Mexico City
- 2025 · Vjosa Quest · research / eco-liberation · Albania
- 2025 · backyardfest fundraiser · event · New York
- 2025 · Short-Films for Sudan, Haiti, and Yemen · event · Los Angeles
- 2025 · Global Confluence Lab · research arm / articles
- 2025 · EtioMex Confluence · event · Mexico City
- 2025 · Perreo4Congo · event series · New York
- 2025 · XVI International Otter Congress · research · Lima
- 2025 · Otterhood: An Enrichment Study · research / article
- 2025 · THIS Took A Lot of Water · article
- 2025 · Shared Rivers Mapping · digital cartography
- 2024 · Carnaval Solidário · event · Rio de Janeiro
- 2023 · More-Than-Otter Showcase · event · New York
- 2023 · The Otter in the Tree · digital project
- 2022 · Axolotl Museum Workshops · events · Mexico City
- 2022 · LA River Zine Outreach · event · Los Angeles
- 2019 · proto Shared Rivers · event · Los Angeles
Image sheet
Grab any of these from the site for press use. Default credit is “Courtesy of Shared Rivers” unless noted; please confirm photographer credits where you know them.
- Portrait / collective: shared-rivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/img_1930.jpg
Caption: Shared Rivers in the field.
Credit: Courtesy of Shared Rivers. - {r}Evolving Kinship tree: i0.wp.com/shared-rivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Yaanga-Tree.png
Caption: A kinship tree from {r}Evolving Kinship, mapping urban species of Yaanga (the LA basin). Credit: Maya Godoy / Shared Rivers. - EtioMex Confluence: shared-rivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/gelila_rahi_mayacdmx_041025668-e1747606181146.jpg
Caption: EtioMex, an Ethiopian and Mexican CONFLUENCE in Mexico City supporting Tigray relief. Credit: confirm photographer. - Perreo4Congo: shared-rivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-mar-26-2025-10-28-28-am-1-e1747606251719.jpg
Caption: Perreo4Congo, a Brooklyn dancefloor fundraiser for Congo.
Credit: Courtesy of Shared Rivers. - Sonibrijes: shared-rivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/img_3852-e1770698547836.jpeg
Caption: Sonibrijes, a CONFLUENCE in Mexico City. Credit: Courtesy of Shared Rivers. - Otterhood: shared-rivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/img_3280-1-e1740379660155.jpg
Caption: From Otterhood, the collective’s otter enrichment and welfare study. Credit: Courtesy of Shared Rivers. - Botanical Database: shared-rivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-14-at-1.49.03-AM.png
Caption: The Botanical Database, built on open tools and embedded into the site.
Credit: Shared Rivers. - Carnaval Solidário: shared-rivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0j5a5643-e1745524615271.jpg
Caption: Carnaval Solidário in Rio de Janeiro.
Credit: Courtesy of Shared Rivers. - Vjosa Quest: shared-rivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/vjosa_river_by_nasas_earth_observatory_2022-e1770698437364.jpg
Caption: The Vjosa, one of Europe’s last wild rivers. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory (2022).
Press contact
Shared Rivers · Maya Godoy (they/them), co-founder
Email: share.rivers@gmail.com
Instagram: @shared_rivers
Web: shared-rivers.org
Linktree: linktr.ee/shared_rivers
Support / donate: Fractured Atlas, fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/shared-rivers-confluences
Based in Yaanga (Los Angeles), Brooklyn (Lenapehoking), and Mexico City (Tenochtitlan).