Art in Motion
Meet the XoQUE Artists
Selina Calvo (she/her)
Chicana Artist/Community Engagement/Muralist
Selina Calvo was born and raised in Sacramento, California. From a young age Selina was surrounded by art and it influenced her sense of identity.
Berenice Badillo (she/her/ella)
Chicana Artist/Muralist/Social Emotional Engagement/Art Therapy
Berenice is a Spanish speaking Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Board Certified Art Therapist, illustrator, community muralist, and multimedia artist.
Jennifer Clay (she/her/hers/illappa)
Choctaw Artist/ Art Therapist/Environmental Art
Jennifer is the daughter of a boarding school survivor and both sides of her family are rooted in the red earth of Oklahoma. She is a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
Sandra Carmona (she/her/ella)
Wixárika Artist/Muralist/Tattoo Artist
Ke’aku (Hi), I am Sandra Carmona and I am of Wixárika descent, Chicana, the daughter of farmworkers, and a muralist for more than 20 years.
Who We Are
How We Got Here
Sandra Carmona, 2021
Our Projects
Re-Member Her 2022
Berenice Badillo, Selina Calvo, Sandra Carmona and Ana Maria Herrera
Re-Member Her is comprised of eight never-before-seen site specific installations, of which Re-Member Her is the first installation in 2022, that seeks to create allegorical public spaces based in cultural justice. The Front Gallery in San Ysidro, California “Love is an Action” debuts XoQUE’s first installation.
Through the imagery of the Aztec goddess Coyolxāuhqui , XoQUE seeks to interrupt the narrative of women as victims, by redirecting and defining a counter-story in which goddess-hood is reclaimed, wounds healed and sister-hood-honored. In Aztec mythology, Coyolxāuhqui is a goddess warrior that is defeated by her brother Huitzlopotchtli. Coyolxāuhqui is murdered and completely dismembered. She is banished to the darkness and in the darkness she transforms into the moon.
This body of work is an exploration of women living on the border and the current arrangements of social life. The moon represents our unconscious thoughts and emotions. Utilizing Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) metaphor of the body of a woman, or Mother Earth as the U.S.-México border, each installation represents a body part severed that looks at societal wounds, understanding how she has been fragmented, and the process of re-constructing her anew.
Each installation encourages audience participation to co-infect public spaces. The culmination of the work seeks to create intimacy in the attempt to pick up the fragments of our dismembered womanhood and reconstitute ourselves in harmony with nature, body and soul and the mind and spirit. Each series of installations honors each fragment for the purpose of examining and representing the experience of giving life rather than a result of violence and death.