Q&A with Cristina Gabriele of Messwork: Communications Design & Somatic Practice

This is an exciting week, as I have the opportunity to feature my dear friend, Cristina Gabriele, as she celebrates an important milestone -- the one year anniversary of her somatic design practice, Messwork .

To mark this major milestone, Cristina launched MESSY an inquiry-based newsletter exploring the depths of the psyche in pursuit of higher consciousness, radical self responsibility, authenticity, and vibrant living. (Sign up for insights, creativity, and transformation!)

I've known Cristina since our undergrad days, and have watched in deep admiration as her professional journey has taken her from the fine arts and fashion to communications design and academia, culminating in building her own meaningful somatic practice that creates process-oriented interventions for clients. An expert in communications design with experience as a creator, entrepreneur and professor, Cristina is one of the smartest people I know. Her intentional approach, deep curiosity, and penchant for bold ideas has made her not only a dear friend but a professional go-to for me. Her journey is inspiring, demonstrating how we can build the skills and acumen to create our own path underpinned by purpose, personal experiences and passion.

Cristina's vast expertise culminates in Messwork, an alternative to traditional therapy that emphasizes bottom-up, body-oriented approaches to treat trauma and modify stress responses while supporting alignment, integration, fullness, and consciousness-raising.

Take a look at our conversation and reach out to Cristina if you'd like to learn more.

You’ve had an eclectic career to date! You’ve told me that when you found the field of communications design it was an ‘aha’ moment for you. Tell us about your career trajectory and the thread that weaves it all together.

I have! Yet, looking back, it all feels connected and part of a more extensive inquiry and process. Finding Communications Design (at least in an academic context) was a lightbulb moment for me - I found the language for what I had been doing or trying to do for about a decade or so prior (across industry and media), which was deeply powerful and transformative.?

My professional design career began when I worked in fine jewelry and production in London, England. While my day job focused on classical and traditional design and production (fine metals and gemstones), my work during outside hours resided in abstract and conceptual territories where material investigation and inquiry were always central to my creative process.?

After 3 or so years as Head of Product for a prominent jewelry company, I launched my own brand, Heart & Noble, and my first collection, which marked the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey. From there, my work became interdisciplinary, evolving jewelry designs into wearable art and fashion, merging sculpture with technology. After another 3 or so years, I brought my company to New York, branching out into fashion publication, editorial work, and branding with my multidisciplinary design practice, CG studio, and jewelry practice. I got my Master's in Communications Design from Pratt Institute, where I’ve been teaching for the past 5 years in the same program I graduated from.?

More recently, I launched my newest venture, Messwork, a somatic design practice that processes with and through the body, focusing on nonverbal communication. These creative career evolutions have all been centered and grounded in communication (both verbal and nonverbal) - through various objects, experiences, materials, environments, digital and physical media, curriculums, narrative universes, and brands, touching and traversing the communal, personal and interpersonal, hyperlocal and global.

Communications design has both an academic and practical application. Can you give an overview on the differences and how you bridge that too??

To the best of my ability, I teach the way I practice and practice the way I teach to integrate and, as you say, build bridges rather than creating separation, fragmentation, and dissonance across the academic and practical. Students and faculty need to grasp and be able to translate their academic knowledge and approaches meaningfully and responsibly into the world - and the world certainly benefits from engaging in critical, conceptual, and pedagogical inquiry.?

And yet, there is a bridge that continues to require support and reinforcement. In most academic contexts, the theoretical is prioritized, speculation and experimentation are encouraged (not to mention a great luxury). Projects may even be hypothetical, and there tends to be a positive feedback loop between students and students, students and faculty, which can but doesn't always stand up to industry criticism. Practicing in a professional context involves managing multiple and complex stakeholders, constraints tied to commercial viability, project management skills, client relations, communication, and the integration of business skills and acumen, including the working of timelines and budgets.?

When I can, for my students, I adapt project briefs to support authentic world inquiry (or make actual connections), creating obstructions, opportunities, and applicable constraints to support their creative processes as well as address real-world needs. I bring in folks outside of the institute to provide alternative perspectives and, hopefully, insights that can expand and deepen their work and their ability and desire to be of service.?

The way I bridge these gaps for myself is one and the same. Moving between Messwork and my professorship forces me to become agile, fluid, and patient in knitting together these applications; the more integrated we are, the more impactful our solutions and contributions become. Ultimately, Communications Design is a service-based discipline, meaning there are users and multiple stakeholders. The more we can design, create, and break (out of necessity) in a systems (within systems) based capacity, learning how to operate holistically within that complexity, the more impactful we are in change-making. Ultimately, designers seek complexity - it's inherent to their craft.?

You’ve launched your own practice - Messwork - which is amazing. Tell us about that journey and your mission for that side of your work.

Yes! Thank you! Messwork integrates, implements, and practices all my cross-disciplinary communication efforts and interests, namely Communications Design (systems and artifacts), Spiritual Psychology, and Somatics.?

In launching Messwork, I tapped into all that I learned through my academic career with a BA in Psychology and Business and MFA in Communications Design, which created depthful and meaningful connections between psychology and design. However, the body (Somatic) piece was missing. Other relevant experiences shaped my practice, including a health crisis (and sequence of invisible illnesses) in my late 20’s, which catapulted an inquiry into more comprehensive healing modalities, outside of the realm of what I was exposed to date with my education in Psychology, and the urgency of the circumstances supported the applied use of my design acumen. Finally,? Messwork relies on my creative practices, products, services, experiences across a 15+ year design career, especially in how they explore the body in relation to objects, space, systems, environments, self, peers and groups. While I have worked across diverse physical materiality in a multidisciplinary and mixed media capacity, I became incredibly and increasingly intrigued with the intangible, the invisible, yet the palpable, which led me to energy work and nonverbal communication in a Somatic Psychology context.

While Messwork’s primary mission is to move folks from wounding to authenticity and repair by leveraging their creativity in and through somatic interventions, Messwork is also emerging as a methodology of sorts in my approach to self-healing as we work to reconstitute ourselves (our fragmented parts, often in disarray as a result of trauma), through artistic creation and labor. While Messwork’s three-legged stool is materializing across personal transformation work in a 1-1 capacity, somatic design offerings for practitioners in their own practice-building journey and the development of digital resources to support both sides of the work, the primary offering for clients immediately sits in the personal transformation realm with a focus on the individual holistically, or with a specialized focus on their entrepreneurial efforts. Ultimately, the practice focuses on self-resourcing and Psychosomatic Unity, the movement towards creative evolution and rehabilitation (through creativity and mess-making) from within.?

We’ve talked about thought leadership quite a bit. Everyone seems to have a different definition. How do you define it and what is one tangible example of thought leadership in action??

We have! Ideally, Thought Leadership is value and meaning-oriented in that it's intended to be of service in some capacity. I don’t feel that voices or figures need to be authoritarian or expert-based, but they certainly require a quality of knowledge and innovation imperative in delivering insight.?

I believe Thought Leadership can challenge conventional wisdom and push boundaries (without invading them) yet has to be held accountable, extending from integrity, responsibility, and credibility, cultivating trust with the audience in and through sharing (across platforms), avoiding misinformation that might be misleading and self-serving.?

A notable example that touches the realms we’ve been exploring across the academic, practical, psychological, and embodied realms is Brené Brown’s research on Vulnerability and Leadership. Her famous TED Talk on “The Power of Vulnerability” has contributed to a cultural shift in how vulnerability is perceived across leadership and personal growth (both academically and corporately), encouraging leaders to embrace their vulnerability as a strength.

What is the most unexpected thing you have learned or done within the communications field??

Hands down - working with the body and aspects of the self via nonverbal communication and/or patterned energy dynamics (in a system's context) interpersonally with my clients. This continues to be the most vigorous and exciting education I’ve ever experienced (or received), filled with the unexpected continually and consistently - which is perhaps why I gravitate towards the work.?

What I’ve learned: if we can speak the language of nature (and move with it), we can increase the odds of our fluency, comprehension, communication, and collaboration in a global context (for impact).?

What I’ve done: Allowed for and practiced listening to my body's voices, gestures, and languages (across various tonalities, cadences, and wildernesses) as indicative of that nature.?

You can book a complimentary session with Cristina for either Personal Transformation or Practice Building, here.