Manta Espiritual
The Kumeyaay traditional land straddles the U.S./Mexico border and have experienced three cycles of land dispossession.  Collectivo XoQUE created site specific art installations on both sides of the border with the Kumeyaay/Kumiai community to raise awareness of their ongoing presence and to create pathways of healing through language, geography, and counter storytelling. Our installation centers on a poem from a Kumiai poet and cultural bearer seeking change and unification her people. Each artist has co-created a unique installation that encouraged dialogue and created visual representation of the border tribes. These multimedia installations formed a three-dimensional, conceptual land paintings that is based of cultural memories and the intentional future. Together with song & ceremony, the two native groups created a silhouette of a 140 foot snake on the ground using flour to illustrate the rupture of a community by a border wall that has created a loss of culture, loss of traditions, loss of language, and economic disparity. This engagement assisted in imagining a new future that included reunification, resistance, and healing.

In this three dimensional mural project to be installed in the child reunification room at the County of San Diego March 2023. We took into consideration that this centrally located mural would be visited frequently and that there will be a strong correlation to this space by families and children that have gone through much loss and trauma.  
XoQUE wanted to convey images focused on strength, growth, resilience, and empowerment. The book is central to the design as it’s about the stories we tell ourselves and the stories that have been told about us, our families, our parents, and our communities. We wanted to invite the viewer to see that they have the power to change the story to a counter story that better serves them. The mural conveys many choices: within themselves, they have the ability to turn the page that offers new hope, they can close the book and have a fresh start, they can look within and rearrange what they think about the story, and they can even jump right off the story.

This original mural created by Berenice Badillo in 1997 will be restored in the national historic landmark Chicano Park in San Diego California.  “Mural in Chicana Park” was created during a time where mural painting was not allowed due to Caltrans wanting to destroy the murals to make them earthquake safe. Chicano Park hold the largest collection of Chicano murals in the world. 
Mural painting is and continues to be a male dominated field. Chicano park was the only place where Berenice  could see images that looked like her, stories like those of her family and where she could be proud of her culture. Berenice painted this mural mostly on canvas and in an act of rebellion pasted on the pillar.
This mural images start and end with strong women. Women that were warriors not just naked and depicts struggle, connection and intergenerational knowledge.

(SBCS) and the art collaborative, XoQUE-Art in Motion, propose a community envisioning project that will result in a community mural that involves south bay community residents of all ages and backgrounds. The mural serves to create hope, synthesize values, and contributes to self & community identity. This collaborative project will utilize an art-based processing method enriched in art therapy that will support communal conversations that support a sense of ownership and empowerment that increases communication, provides a sense of belonging as well as an opportunity to share personal relatedness while supporting perpetual growth within the community. The overall goal of this project is to create an environment where community members will be supported, centered, and affirmed as holders and creators of knowledge, where our perspectives as Latinx and BIPOC matter, and finally, where intergenerational dialogue and historically marginalized community members can leverage their own cultural wealth.

This event included a large scale installation and social engagement. On the floor was a hand painted 20 x 20 foot map that showed the original land of the Kumeyaay. This map was a way to amplify indigenous voices, to create ongoing conversations and intentional pursuits of history while raising awareness and inspiring others to action. Participants joined a sacred circle on the map where participants created a community ring of clay that involved “gifting” their neighbor with small clay sculptures. The participants weaved giant braids and "problem solved" as a mirror to our current society.

“Invisible Ecologies Resisting Against Peripheral Spaces of Contradiction”

The concept of our proposal is that artists can reveal a third space of interconnectedness

that hides within two peripheral spaces of contradiction. Ecotones are areas of steep transition that exist between ecological communities, ecosystems, ecological regions and human-generated boundaries. In utilizing the metaphor of ecotones, we forge forward in

highlighting a third space that brings opportunities for healing, awareness and agency.

This participant-based exhibit highlights that third space as both sides of the border clash and evolve, changing the space between human-generated boundaries.

The use of dress forms engages beauty as a critical praxis. Dress forms stand for the lost

humanity, for the women butchered for their beauty, the earth raped of its resources and

their struggle in the constant crashing of emotions, relationships, people, history and

stories. The female dress forms lack a head to see and be seen in our societies of

misogyny. The portraits of leaves that cover the forms reclaim their voice through the

representation of the earth, of indigenous practice and of various faces; women;

transwomen; native women; and children. The dress forms are hung neck to neck

producing a mirroring effect that asks the viewer to seek self-reflection.