I created this image in order to raise funds for Black Lives Matter Los Angeles in 2020.

I illustrated six portraits as part of Investigation Discovery’s #IDxPOV series, a project to give voice to those who have been impacted by crime or the criminal justice system and whose stories are not typically heard. We collaborated to create these portraits as a way to honor some of the young Black, Indigenous and people of color featured in the ID show, Still A Mystery.

I pitched and illustrated this idea for the LA Times Latinx Files newsletter. Each week the newsletter features a new illustration or comic from a new illustrator. I was inspired by a recent visit to Pasco, Washington, a small city with a significant Latinx population, mainly Mexican. Since moving to eastern WA, it's been challenging to feel connected to home, and the Michoacana party supply store and restaurant made me feel so nostalgic. The sketch is based on photographs I took in the store.

Adobe asked me to participate in their campaign #AdobeCreateForward, and asked me to nominate an illustrator that I admire and create a piece of art inspired by their style, all while previewing the new #IllustratorOniPad app. I illustrated Johanna Toruño @johannareign and creator of The Unapologetic Street Series.

I teamed up with Fellow Products to design a limited edition Carter Move Mug as part of their Pride Artist Series. I was one of four artists chosen. Taking inspiration from 1960s political graphics, I created this Carter Mug to honor my chosen family and illustrate that queer kinship is just as valid and deep as romantic love. Incorporating strong type and digital drawings, my design is a declaration that love is not limited to society’s prescriptions, rather it is infinite.

I illustrated and designed the rebrand for Anzaldúing It. A Queer Latinx podcast on navigating academia, relationships & mental health. Hosted by Trans Studies scholar Dr. Jack Caraves & Political graphics scholar and visual artist Dr. Angelica Becerra (me!)

This print, titled “1-800-PAY-A-FEMME” is part of the 1st Queer Latina-focused printmaking atelier at the long-standing printmaking studio Self-Help Graphics in East Los Angeles. Led by artist Dalila Mendez, the atelier seeks to uplift the voices and work of contemporary queer Chicana and Latinx artists. This print was made as a response to the increasing demand by women of color and queer femmes of valuing gendered labor such as emotional labor and linking it to the ways in which patriarchal notions of work render the emotional labor in society invisible and unworthy of compensation. According to Leah Fessler, “the term emotional labor was originally coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild in the 1983 book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, her description of the need for workers to regulate their emotions (so to satisfy their customers)” The labor of managing emotions falls disproportionately on women and femmes. I wanted to bring awareness to this, and in this piece imagined a hotline aptly titled “1-800-PAY-A-FEMME” were dialing the number leads the caller to be confronted with a way to pay the queer women of color who have done emotional labor for them. As Alicia Grandey explains, emotional labor “Is tied to your wages and outcomes, and if you don’t do it, there are consequences.” Often, the consequences for women and femmes of color when they refuse to do this labor in their workplace and public life, are negative and more severe than their male counterparts. This piece imagines, what would it look like if we could 1-800-PAY-A-FEMME?

My role as an artist led to a collaboration with all artivists interviewed for my dissertation project in the form of portraits. It was important to me for the project to have an accompanying visual component that could be an entry into the written work. The series of portraits I produced as part of this project, became an exhibit titled “Give Us Our Flowers: Latinx Artivist Portraits” shown at UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) in Fall 2019 as part of the Center’s 50th-anniversary program. As an extension of my dissertation, this particular project allowed me to conduct independent collection research at the UCLA CSRC and collaborate with their staff. While this collaboration involved public programs and marketing materials, it was especially fortified during COVID-19, given that I’ve worked with staff in the CSRC to write an essay about my exhibition for digital space. Collaborating between these spaces to activate my scholarship has been a productive practice in balancing projects while crafting innovative and diverse collection displays.

María Izquierdo (October 30, 1902 – December 2,[1] 1955) was a Mexican painter born in my hometown of San Juan de Los Lagos, Jalisco. She is known for being the first Mexican woman to have her artwork exhibited in the United States. She committed both her life and her career to painting art that displayed her Mexican roots and held her own among famous (important figures in Mexican art) Mexican artists: Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

The Palabra Series was born out of my organizing at UCLA. The inspiration behind the series is twofold: first, it is an offering to our elders whose activism has often been forgotten or erased in our larger imaginary, it is an act of remembrance. Womxn before us have built a foundation for many of the social movements we take part in today. Secondly, I wanted to create the images I myself wish I could have grown up with.

Marsha and Silvia. I made a companion piece to my Marsha P Johnson “Pride was a Riot” image, with her best friend and sister in the struggle. Sylvia Rivera.

This piece features a portrait of Marsha P. Johnson, she was an activist, self-identified drag queen, performer, and survivor. She was a prominent figure in the Stonewall uprising of 1969. Marsha went by “Black Marsha” before settling on Marsha P. Johnson. The “P” stood for “Pay It No Mind,” which is what Marsha would say in response to questions about her gender.

For so many of us who grew up in Latin America or the diaspora, Walter Mercado was our introduction to astrology. His capes and general fabulousness made my queer heart so happy, I was inspired by old Tarot fonts and color palettes.

If there’s anything I’ve learned over the past few months of caring for myself post-grad school torture, it’s that your job and the infrastructure of capitalism will not care for us back. It is your support system and the multiple communities that will hold you. I made this piece without any expectations, and frankly, I’m happy it exists and I was able to bring it to life. I made it into print because I want my work to be accessible to others, and the reality of needing to eat and survive is still there. However, I am not attached to the outcome in the way I once was.

This series was inspired by old tarot cards and public figures who embody the qualities of their astrological sign.

Illustration in response to the overturn of Roe Vs. Wade.