On collaborating with your own community

Where do you do your work and what do you need in your studio to make it all happen?

I have access to a workshop and a printer in San Francisco at Minnesota Street Project. I also have space [to work] in my living space. If I’m printing files or editing things, I go to Minnesota Street. If I’m working in the wood shop I can either go [to Minnesota Street Projects] or I can do it here [at my home]. I’ve been experimenting more with laser cutting techniques, and that I have access to at [California College of the Arts, where I teach]. When I have access to things, I’m like, “Oh, I wonder how I can learn to do that, that looks really cool.”

You describe yourself as a visual artist, an educator, and a curator. You’re making work through the mediums of constructive photographs, site-specific installations, and public programing. Was there a piece of art or an experience that helped you see the possibility of what your photography practice could be?

I went to college in Indiana. I’m originally from Colombia, so that was quite a stark contrast. When I was in Indiana, I did a project resembling the photo sequences of Duane Michals. He’s a white gay photographer. I saw [the sequences] and I wanted to do a photo sequence of two people getting romantic together. It was actually a friend of mine [in the photos] with his ex. It was really intimate. I was just like, “Can you stage getting undressed?” I don’t know why I thought that would be okay. But of course, it was very sweet and very intense between them. I remember feeling the trust of them letting me witness and photograph them. I put the six photos in an exhibition. The town that the university is in is actually really conservative, and there was a really big backlash with the photos, because it was two men. It became a big thing in the school, and I was just 18. My art professors were very much like, “We will not take the work down; this is censorship.” In the Midwest, coming to terms with my latinidad, what that meant being a Latino person in the United States… I just realized how powerful it was to make images like that. I was like, “Are people still homophobic?” Yes, they were. But I felt so trusted in [that] project. I could show the photos and the people who are in the photos were so supportive of the whole process. That felt like a beautiful tool to fight prejudices and assumptions that people make about people they don’t know.

Most of the photography that I was taught was all very white photography. We’re here. We need to make work. We need to occupy these spaces. How can we activate photography in public space? I’ve done different things. I had an exhibition at SFMOMA and I did a drag pageant featuring older BIPOC performers. To me, those two things are part of the practice: bringing my work in to diversify the primary collection of the museum, and bringing my community and getting them paid properly to also access these spaces to do what they do best.

After Touch, photo by Ruben Diaz, Courtesy of OCHI gallery

How do you start a project?

I feel like everything just feels like an evolution of the last thing in a very organic way. I don’t remember ever having to sit down and be like, “What will I make?” I think that in the making, there’s just more making. Because I love reading so many things—especially about trans history—I think that keeps on feeding the creativity bug in a way that feels really exciting. I also use grants and applications as a way to brainstorm. If I see something, I start being like, “Okay, that’s a cool space. What could it be?” I like the idea of containers, too; I think things come out of those spaces.

Is it ever okay to abandon a project? If so, how do you come to that decision?

I like to plan a lot of things in advance. I’m a planner. It gives me a sense of what I’m going to be working on during this time… I’ve had moments where I [realized], “Oh, that aspect of the project is too ambitious. Instead of doing five things, I’m doing three things.” Some of the things that I keep coming back to in my work are all interrelated, so it kind of feels like a big project. Definitely I’ve had moments where I started an idea and I’m like, “This is not the right route,” and I just reroute. My practice right now is like a garden. You keep putting things in and you don’t take the whole tree out. Maybe the leaves are falling, so you take those. That’s where I’m at right now.

You were born in Colombia, finished high school in Costa Rica, did your undergrad in Indiana, and spent some time in New York, before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area and attending grad school. You also shared that this was the first election you were able to vote in. What is it about the United States, or specifically the Bay Area, that made you want to commit to this place and invest in it as your home?

When someone asks me why I moved to Indiana, I’m like, “Oh, that just kind of happened.” You’re looking for opportunities. I left home when I was 16, so I was a young person with a Colombian passport. It’s not a great passport to travel with at all. There’s so many assumptions and there’s so much harassment that happens with all the drug trade. Especially as an AFAB [assigned female at birth] person. I love traveling and I need to have freedom of movement. For me, it wasn’t really a choice of staying. It was more that I know that being an artist in the US is relatively easier than being an artist back home. Once I had degrees here, it’s kind of hard to use them there. Also, I get to be a trans person. Even though it’s very dangerous, still, to be a trans person in the US, I think back home there’s still a lot of stigma and violence that I could be facing daily, in a much more intense way.

San Francisco [feels] like an amazing home. I felt like there were more opportunities for funding for queer and trans artists, for people of color. The scene is rather small. There are so many beautiful people in the Bay Area, so politically aware. It feels like an amazing city and place for people to grow their practice. At the same time, I think so much about policy. I was able to stay in the US through marriage, right when the Defense of Marriage Act was overturned in 2013. I think it’s amazing to really feel how policy changes things. Coming to San Francisco and being able to access gender-affirming health care and hormones, I can see the impact of pushing within those systems. I really do love that about San Francisco and the Bay Area. There’s ways in which you can start something and affect a lot of different people.

I think one of the shining examples of your commitment in this area is your 2022 piece “I Am Very Lucky, Very Lucky To Be Trans,” a site-specific installation at SFMOMA that featured portraits of 33 Bay Area trans, intersex, and gender nonconforming activists and cultural leaders who are at the forefront of revolutionary advocacy. This wasn’t your first collaborative piece, so I’m really curious about what you’ve learned from past collaborations that helped prepare for this one.

Before that collaboration, I did a poster series on Market Street. It was part of the San Francisco Arts Commission right at the [start] of the pandemic. I was looking for a way to check in with people and see what they were up to. Everyone was kind of working [in the] gig economy. I got a grant and I was trying to meet people and pay them for their time, but mostly check in with the community. I think it was my coping mechanism, to organize and meet people. There ended up being more than 60 collaborators. It feels really powerful to see the numbers. I’ve done collaborations with three to five people in the past, but there was something so beautiful about seeing all those faces, all the stories. Those photos are part of the GLBT Historical Society now, so there’s this document of Bay Area life. [I realized] I can be a documentarian. I work so much in queer archives and I always come back to the sense that there are so many anonymous bodies in the archive. We don’t know who anyone is; we only know who the leaders are. How can we include everyone in the history that we’re writing?

I Am Very Lucky, Very Lucky To Be Trans, photo by Katherine Du Tiel, SFMOMA

For the SFMOMA piece, I think people know Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, these icons—which they are—of trans history. I also feel like sometimes we get a bit lazy about acknowledging that there are so many people who are still alive today who we could be honoring and could be learning more from, who are also right next to us. It’s really sad, in a way. When I imagined the piece I really wanted there to be 33 living people. Since I made the piece, three people from the project have passed away. So it’s a little bittersweet now. I never thought that my work would be so charged with that energy. The more it goes on, or [I] photograph people and they pass away from overdose and all sorts of things, the work starts to feel a little bit heavier. I didn’t really anticipate it. But also, it feels important, right? Because people will say, “We don’t have a photo of this person [who died].” And I’m like, “No, I have a photo of that person that we can use.” That feels really special.

For people who might be curious about wanting to take on a collaborative project, is there anything they should know in terms of techniques or working with a large group of people?

The most important thing is building trust. A lot of the people [in “I Am Very Lucky, Very Lucky To Be Trans”] I had met before in different capacities. I was in the community for a long time. Some other conversations were introductions; I didn’t know every single person beforehand. But there was this understanding that we were there to look out for each other. It didn’t feel like I was just coming in and being like, “What do you do? What is this?” I think my tip for collaboration is something adrienne maree brown says: move at the speed of trust. Really taking time to listen to people and listen to their stories. What’s important to me is that these collaborations are not a one-time thing and that we can continue collaborating in different ways for the long term.

What does your work entail day to day? Can you walk me through what a regular Wednesday might look like for you?

I’m thinking about today being Transgender Day of Remembrance. I am going to host [an] event today. There is going to be a march of people going to City Hall, and then there’s going to be an event at the LGBT Center, and I am preparing for that. One of my trans mentors, Adela Vázquez, a Cuban immigrant transgender activist, passed away. Recently, they called us to tell us that her ashes were ready. I’ve been traveling, I just came back, and this morning I said, “When I wake up, [I’ll] pick up her ashes, because it’s Transgender Day of Remembrance.” I feel like today is not a general Wednesday… As queer and trans people, we’re making rituals. Today felt very magical to pick up [Adela’s] ashes. I’ve never picked up someone’s ashes before. To bring them to my house and to prepare her eulogy, which I’m also going to read at the event today. I feel like today, there are trans spirits around us. I also feel like after the election, we’re feeling lots of uncertainty. But I’m feeling very hopeful. We get to gather in community and remember the people that have passed, but also the people who have worked so hard for us to keep on going. So, it’s not a moment to give up.

I’m so sorry for your loss. I know that Señora Vásquez is someone who has been featured in your work multiple times. Your relationship to her is a direct reflection of your interest in intergenerational trans and queer kinship. As much as you’re comfortable, could you share any memories of how she shaped you as a person and artist?

I met Adela Vásquez through my trans masc sibling, Julián Delgado Lopera, who’s an amazing writer. Julián is Adela’s son—as in, trans son. Julián would tell me about Adela and I was like, “I want to meet her.” I met her and she was just very sweet. There was already familiarity there because Julián introduced us. She would cook for us and I think what resonated with me so much about her is that she died when she was [66], but she loved house music, she loved dancing, she loved having a good time. And she really spearheaded activism around HIV in the Latinx community through performing. I love that she used her art as a way to educate other people and raise funds for other people. It’s a very powerful way to do that. Adela, to me, is someone who has an amazing sense of humor—super sarcastic and so real. I didn’t grow up around trans elders in Colombia, or even when I lived in New York. I wasn’t connected to the trans community in the same way. It wasn’t until San Francisco that I started meeting trans elders. There are so many changes that have happened in the last couple of decades; they will tell you stories about it and that makes it feel like that history is so alive. It makes me feel really hopeful to hear about their struggles and be like, “You persevered in these ways and that’s what we should do, too.” It makes it so that when I have relationships with students in the classroom, I can see when someone’s lost or trying to find themselves and I can sort of be a mentor to them, too, in whatever way they need. I really do love the idea of intergenerational connection and sharing that in San Francisco especially, which is a very young city. You don’t really run into elders in the same way that you would in other cities where they are just hanging out in parks. The US doesn’t want people to be outside in the same way. I do think that we need to be specific and very intentional about how we build relationships with elders.

Adela Vazquez, Courtesy of Marcel Pardo Ariza

In preparing for this interview, I discovered that we were born a year apart, which means that we’re both in our early 30s. Staying in this headspace of queer intergenerational communities, I’m curious about what it’s been like for you to transition from your 20s into your 30s, where we’re occupying a different, more mature space in this generational lineage.

I think that people have been lying to us when they say our 20s are the best. I feel like my 30s are great. I have a richer understanding of who I am as a person. Before, I would have a show in two months and I’d be like, “Okay, I’m gonna make some art and make it happen.” Now I have a project a year or two or three years in advance, and the budgets are bigger. How do I plan for this? How do I keep showing up in a way that makes sense rather than burning myself out and just running, running, running without direction, and being very intentional? Who should I talk to to make it happen? Who do I need to get to know more? There’s this calm sensibility that feels really exciting to me, actually. At the same time, my students are in their 20s, and I see how much energy they have and how they push things through. I think that’s an amazing strength. I think there’s all these trends in different moments of where you’re at. Right now, in my 30s, I feel like I have a bit more of a bird’s-eye view where I can ask, “What needs to happen? When does it need to happen? How can we make it in a beautiful way?”