Principles

My practice does not emerge from the logics of commodification, nor is it tethered to institutional markets or gallery representation. It is accountable to the histories and futures of historically underrepresented communities, especially those rooted in the contested ground of California and beyond. I create not to accumulate capital or acclaim, but to unsettle dominant narratives, to activate memory, and to contribute to the unfinished work of decolonial repair. We move through this work as vessels—sometimes coyote, sometimes mirror, sometimes disruption—opening space for stories that resist erasure and ignite relation.

Rooted Practice / Emergent Visions

Our work begins in recognition that we stand on ancestral land—that every frame, every line, every sound reverberates through histories of displacement, resistance, and survival. I am shaped by early mentorship at Galería de la Raza (Re)Generation Project, through mentorship from elders such as Yolanda Lopez and Amalia Mesa-Banes, by animating Indigenous and Chicanx histories, by honoring the essential labor of farmworkers and domestic workers, and by creating in collaboration with dancers, musicians, muralists, artists, scholars, researchers, and communities of color.

As an artist shaped by Chicanx and Indigenous worldviews, I’ve learned that art practice is never separate from memory, responsibility, politics, and movements. Our work is entangled—born of relation, shaped by place, informed by economies, and steeped in contradiction. I live within these tensions: grounded in communities of resistance while working within an institution built atop expropriated Indigenous lands, inside a late-capitalist empire. I navigate these contradictions as sites of struggle—where redistribution, refusal, and collective imagination become daily practices. The work does not resolve these tensions; it moves with them, answerable to those whose stories, survivals, and futures remain at the center.

Through animation, muralism, documentary media, and interdisciplinary performance, I strive to rupture settler colonial narratives that have muted our histories and flattened our futures. I work across mediums not to innovate for innovation’s sake, but to find the right form to carry the weight of the story. These stories are not mine alone—they are co-remembered, co-imagined, co-created with relatives across time.

This work arises not from economies of visibility or valuation, but from a deeper obligation—to the land and its histories, to our futures both imagined and real, and to the present crises that call us to account. I hold this artistic and pedagogical practice as an offering—shaped by listening and learning, by principled challenge, and by histories that move through and beyond me. It is a situated practice—learning as much from acts of refusal and collective holding as from embracing the unknown, the haunted, and the deeply unsettling. My task is not to center myself, but to stay responsive: to show up with care, to contribute where invited, and to hold open space for narratives long denied their full presence.

Through animation, media, and collective practice, I try to serve ongoing struggles for memory, justice, and decolonization—learning and accountable to the best of my ability. As an educator and mentor, I practice teaching as a decolonial offering—resisting patriarchal and hierarchical structures that isolate and reproduce harm—fostering mutual mentorship rooted in respect, listening, and critical kinship.

Ten Tactics for Decolonial Art Practice

These tactics are not commandments, but living practices and reminders. They come from movement spaces, ceremonial circles, classrooms, kitchens, and conversations across generations. Not perfect—but tools for making sense, for returning while moving forward, making rupture and making way.

10. Exert Stress on Unyielding Conventions
Refuse respectability. Agitate inherited forms. Shake foundations until the dust reveals truth.

9. Reveal the Hidden Face of Power
Peel back the language of neutrality. Show how power moves through stories, schools, silence.

8. Hold Off Amnesia
Amnesia is colonial. Re-membering is sacred. Call back the names. Call back the songs. Call back the land.

7. Perform Democratic Counter-Surveillance
Flip the lens. Watch who’s watching. Dismantle the gaze that polices brown and Black bodies.

6. Speak to that which is Silent
What they call silence is often refusal. Listen with your bones. Speak when the spirit says speak.

5. Engage Sites of Danger
Be willing to enter the rooms you were told to avoid. Be willing to be uncomfortable. But move with care and purpose.

4. Dance with the Coyote
The trickster teaches with contradiction. Laugh to survive. Disrupt with play. But don’t forget—you’re the joke, too.

3. Use Magical Powers
Our ancestors practiced alchemy. Transformation is not metaphor—it’s method. Use it with humility.

2. Occupy Media Space
Media is modern ceremony—or it could be. Make work that reclaims airwaves, timelines, and imaginations.

1. Do the Work
There are no shortcuts. Liberation is not a brand. Do the work. Honor your elders. Walk your talk.