Joel Garcia
Joel Garcia (Huichol) is an Indigenous artist and cultural organizer that uses Indigenous-based frameworks to center those most impacted, and arts-based strategies such as printmaking and altar-making to raise awareness of issues facing underserved communities, youth, and other targeted populations. His work explores healing and reconciliation, as-well-as memory and place. He is a former fellow of Monument Lab’s National Fellowship (’19), the Intercultural Leadership Institute and current fellow (20-’21) of “Shaping the Past” a partnership between the Goethe-Institut, Monument Lab and the German Federal Agency for Civic Education.
He is the co-founder of Meztli Projects, an arts & culture collaborative centering indigeneity into creative practice; and served as Co-Director at nationally acclaimed arts organizationSelf Help Graphics & Art (‘10-’18).
As an Indigenous artist living in Yaangna (Los Angeles) Joel Garcia practices artmaking through a lens of reindigenization. This is critical in cradling how this work is produced and conceived, and the intellectual labor that takes place alongside and with his Tongva relatives as-well-as other California Tribal Nations (CTN), always centering their stewardship of lands and ancestral knowledges.
At the core of Garcia’s practice is printmaking in its rawest form, using medicinal plants to create inks while incorporating technology to expand the medium. Resulting works move beyond the page, often containing three-dimensional qualities including stitching, and displayed in the context of an altar or installation.
