Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

I am an arts organizer and an artist working professionally at the intersection of the two. My work comes from a place of generosity, and organizing allows me to share with others in community and to make in a variety of media, including performance and text. I am invested in the intersectional histories and present of communities of queer people of color and disabled people and how to create more equitable practices and access to resources in the arts and performance field. My work is deeply influenced by my experiences as a queer transgender Chicano.

While At Headlands

While at Headlands I will work on a poetic framework for survey-based research for queer and gender nonconforming people of color centered on intimacy and care as forms of survival. By expressing what is unquantifiable in measures and materials other than the standard means of reporting, I am interested in creating space and honoring, in multitudes, our bodies’ needs, desires and journeys. For me there is a desire to work within different languages of recognition that push against late-capitalist notions of expected legibility, especially in reference to formalized research processes, which are often created within normative paradigms. How can poc queer tenderness unfold in this manner? While in the studio I anticipate moving between writing and crafting “data” to be visualized in different media. This project is speculative and is influenced by my experience organizing and working in arts equity initiatives.