mulowayi iyaye nonó (b. 1979, Borinquen) is an actor and visual artist with a transdisciplinary practice that weaves together performance, character creation, vocal exploration, and large-scale light installations developed with biomaterials and symbiotic yeast cultures, in dialogue with bacteria as a metaphor for community regeneration. Their work draws from personal archives to explore memory, territory, the documentary, and autofiction. Through video, live actions, and spatial interventions, they create environments where the archive becomes living matter.

As part of their methodology, nonó facilitates collective practice labs such as Archivo Memorable, a performative laboratory centered on the personal archive as living matter that challenges official narratives, centering our stories as acts of affirmation and existence.

Their work has been presented in Germany, New York, Puerto Rico, Venice, and other international contexts. They have participated in exhibitions such as the 10th Berlin Biennale (2018), the 79th Whitney Biennial (2019), and the Hawai’i Triennial (2025). Their work is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico.

Throughout their career, nonó has received numerous recognitions, including the Latinx Artist Fellowship from the US Latinx Art Forum (2022), the Rome Prize in Visual Arts from the American Academy in Rome (2022), the United States Artists Award (2018), the Art of Change Award from the Ford Foundation (2017), and the Global Arts Fund from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice (2017 & 2020).

In 2025, nonó produced and starred in the short film Centurión, a collaboration with Las Nietas de Nonó, where they portrayed Yuni, the central character in a narrative addressing state violence during the “mano dura” policing policies of 1990s Puerto Rico.

Beyond their artistic practice, mulowayi leads cultural access and social justice initiatives in communities like their own — Barrio San Antón in Carolina — organizing community-based projects and advocating for equity in the arts, as well as the amplification of voices historically excluded or rendered invisible.