
“We are here, we have always been here, but now we claim it. We set it on fire, we shout it out.”
This is an excerpt from a text in which Sheyla Santana introduces three collages titled “Without Us, There Is No History.” She integrates visual elements emblematic of the province—traditional costumes, the seed pods of the Guanacaste tree, and the Annexation Act—blending them with literary compositions that challenge the invisibility of women in the historical records of the region:
I think of the history of Guanacastecan women, a history less preserved in books compared to the tales of the sabanero, the bull rider, the men who sign the documents, or those who had the leisure to sing and compose.
I speak of all women—those who build towns, far beyond the confines of a skirt or a traditional dish.
Sheyla Santana, 35, is a woman, Guanacastecan, mother, Tica-Nica, and an “artivist,” a term combining artist and activist. These identities are how she defines herself. Born on April 23, World Book Day, it’s a coincidence she can’t help but highlight.
Googling her name reveals fragments of all the facets of her “artivism”: interviews where she discusses her literary creations, her participation in community gatherings exploring the link between culture and economy, her name listed as a recipient of grants for launching cultural projects, and even her presence in several minutes of the Cañas Municipal Council. For over a decade, she has appeared there to hold leaders accountable or propose projects for her canton.
She is a woman who thrives on breaking stereotypes—multifaceted and restless, navigating the arts with her ship’s bow aimed against the current. She has felt she’s hit walls since her high school days, which is precisely why she seeks to propose visions beyond the traditional Guanacastecan cultural canon.
“When we organized cultural gatherings with my high school classmates, we were the different ones, the ones who weren’t doing folklore, and that’s a strong stigma here… presenting something that isn’t folkloric is hard to sustain,” she recounts.
But it is precisely these experiences of resistance that have shaped what she calls her “life mission.” And she is clear about it.
“It’s about being here [in Cañas], democratizing culture, dignifying the work of art and culture professionals, and ensuring access to that right,” she says with a firm voice, full of conviction. “Even if it’s just a small grain of sand in the world, that’s what I’m going to do.”
Reaching that epiphany took Sheyla decades. She is subversive in a province where macho folklore is deeply entrenched—a reality that other female artists, like Guadalupe Urbina, have also called out.
Cultural resistance
The forces that once pushed her to abandon her passion didn’t veer her off course; instead, they built her resilience.
“For the past few years, I feel like I have nothing to lose. It’s that feeling of having everything taken away already, like that saying, ‘they took everything from us, so they took away our fear.’ It’s very real, very real,” she reflects.
After high school, Sheyla left Cañas for six years to study Performing Arts at the ‘Universidad Nacional’ in Heredia.
She had placed all her hopes on the idea that, upon returning to her canton, the perception of her as a street artist and vagabond would change. However, upon her return, she faced several frustrations as she found many doors closed: the same people occupying cultural organization spaces, resistant to diversifying the arts.
“The return was incredibly hard, it was brutal because it wasn’t like I thought it would be—like I’d say, ‘look, I studied, now I’m not the crazy person on the corner, I’m here to do this, I’m here to propose that’… But I went through a really tough emotional low when I came back and saw that nothing was happening, no matter how hard I tried,” she shares.
So, she decided to volunteer with the fire department for a while to clear her mind. During that pause, she also had her son, who is now eight years old. “And then I said, ‘Wait a minute, let’s get back to action,’” she recalls.

Sheyla Santana, a sociocultural manager and graduate of Performing Arts at the ‘Universidad Nacional’, channels her artistic passion through various mediums such as literature, performing arts, and cultural management. However, she finds a unique visceral outlet in collage, a space where she feels she can be more direct and forceful in her denunciations. “It allows me to be more straightforward, stronger,” she says. Photo by Rubén F. Román captured Sheyla Santana in an image artistically intervened by Sheyla herself
The collage artist
After her brief hiatus, Sheyla restarted with renewed vigor, dedicating herself to developing her own sociocultural management projects. True to her promise, she has been working with even greater intensity over the past two years. This period marked the co-founding of Cañas ProCultural, a community group focused on sociocultural management, which is actively creating spaces to promote art in Cañas.
In this area, Sheyla feels that she has found her true calling: organizing activities to connect artists and communities, creating spaces and opportunities for the often overlooked skills—performing arts, visual arts, and oral tradition. Above all, she has been determined to ensure that a group of women reclaim spaces where they have been invisible for years.
She has primarily raised this issue through her writing and collage art, which she shares on her account sigila.she after thorough research processes, a space where she feels she can “be more visceral.”
“[Collage art] allows me to be more direct, stronger (…). For instance, I work with menstrual blood in several of my collages, and all of that has a deeper meaning,” she explains. Later, she adds, “It’s often said that women are in a state of emergency, that we’re being killed, and it’s true. So when I work with blood, I say, ‘there are things that need to be written in blood because we live them in blood.’”
Her collages have been exhibited at shows and festivals in Peru, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, and even France, but she has yet to showcase her work in Guanacaste.
For Sheyla, the time will come sooner or later, but only if the province “awakens to what we are consuming” and begins to question what is happening in the art scene and where the women in these spaces are.
“We also have to fight against gentrification. There are other foreign women in coastal galleries and here in town, but we know very little about the artists painting here, creating here, who are Guanacastecan,” she explains.
She actively seeks out these women, documents them, and encourages them to step forward and showcase their art, aiming to spark a collective revolution that resonates deeply. “I tell my fellow women, ‘Put out everything you create.’ You made a song? Share it. You’re doing this or that? Share it. Why? Because you inspire me. When I feel down, like I’ve given everything I can and can’t go on, I see that my peers are still fighting, and that inspires me to keep going.”
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