Portfolio for Associate or Full Professor of Art & Data Position at UCLA DMA

A Confluence of Witches, 2024

My text Makuyeika: Somos De Aquí y De Allá was published in A Confluence of Witches: A Modern Witches Anthology, compiled and edited by Casey Zabala. An excerpt of this text can be read here.

VESSEL, 2024

In early 2024, I was chosen as one of 135 artists to have my work preserved on the moon as part of the Arch Lunar Art Archive. This honor inspired the creation of VESSEL (2024), a public artwork exploring vessels—UFOs, canoes, spaceships, or installations—as symbols of resilience and intergalactic communication.

Located at Yaangna in Gloria Molina Grand Park, VESSEL merges technology, storytelling, and community through Indigenous Futurism. Its surface features art depicting a Wixárika origin story with Takutsi Nakawé, who saved life from a flood by instructing Watakame to build a canoe. During the opening, participants shared intentions into a solar-powered crystal within the artwork, transforming VESSEL into an amplifier for dreams. At night, the crystal illuminates, casting a rainbow that sends these intentions into the cosmos. By engaging with UAPs and projecting prayers, VESSEL invites viewers to explore new narratives of survival and hope. Commissioned by the LA County Department of Arts and Culture.

Art Spells On The Moon, 2024

Years ago, I released my art spells on Instagram to process emotions and inspire hope. These spells evolved beyond social media to billboards and skyscrapers, and now, through the Arch Lunar Art Archive, to the moon's surface. Selected in 2024, my artwork was preserved with nanotechnology, transforming spellwork into a cosmic vessel of intention.

The digital collages above showcase the four art spells sent to the moon, inscribed on a special disc below. Each artwork is etched into nickel sheets using NanoFiche technology, ensuring preservation for eons.

Museum of Multidimensional Mutant Maps, 2024

“With their irreverent techno-psychedelia, Edgar Fabián Frías challenges the subjective and colonial nature of Western cartography in favor of a more open-ended and expansive map-making system. Drawing inspiration from the Wixárika (Huichol) people’s Nierika technique, a traditional craft that incorporates yarn, beads, and other objects to depict symbolic images of flora and fauna, Frías creates paintings, sculptures, videos, and interactive installations that subvert linear portrayals of time and space.” - Matt Stromberg, Hyperallergic. (Source)

Standing On The Ground With Your Body In The Sky, 2023

This event at LACMA on June 14, 2023, coincided with the exhibition Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group, 1938–1945. Participants joined a performance workshop exploring how art connects mind, body, spirit, and creativity. We began with a moment of reflection on the paintings, allowing time for art-making and writing. Then, I led a procession through the Resnik Pavilion and Kendall Concourse, ending in a circle at Smidt Welcome Plaza, Participants performed impromptu acts inspired by their meditative moments.

Kïïka, 2023

This artwork is an expression of Indigenous Futurism, inspired by the Nierika, a sacred Wixárika technology used as a map of the universe and a divining tool for ancestral communion. As a descendant of the Wixárika community, I created Kïïka (meaning "come closer" or "cuddle up") as a maximalist blend of personal and collective symbols, geometric shapes, and vibrant colors. It incorporates references to internet subcultures, abstract art, digital decay, and glitch aesthetics, inviting viewers to use the piece as a contemplative mirror for divination and reflection.

Kïïka was featured in the exhibition LIFELIKE: Exploring Body Sovereignty in Web3 at both Vellum in Los Angeles and the University Art Gallery at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. During the exhibition at Cal Poly, I was invited by curator Katie Peyton Hofstadter to lead a contemplative and performative experience as part of the opening. The artwork was also curated into SUMMERTIME by Marcela Vieira, a collaboration between SUPERCOLLIDER, the Brand Library and Art Center, and Glendale Unified School District.

Kïïka was recently highlighted in C Magazine for an article on AI, sovereignty, and gender expansiveness and has been selected as the cover image for the forthcoming Witch Anthology through Dopamine Books in Los Angeles.

Hechizo Tuutú, 2023

Hechizo Tuutú (2023) is a 9-minute "art spell" showcased on the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco throughout June for Pride 2023. Created in collaboration with witch Gabriela Herstik during my artist residency at Coaxial Arts Foundation in Los Angeles and in partnership with Jim Campbell's Studio (Day for Night, 2018) and Boston Properties, this work fuses generative art, animations, and performative rituals. The title, meaning “flower spell” in Spanish and Wixárika, reflects its blend of Indigenous Futurism, Latinx, and queer aesthetics.

The project gained media attention, including coverage by KRON4 TV in San Francisco.

Press

Artwork featured on KRON4: San Francisco Bay Area News.

Stills

Hixiapa, 2022

For my 2022 MFA thesis exhibition at BAMPFA, curated by Claire Frost, I designed a waiting room for a future treatment center. This installation reflects the collective experience of watching loved ones succumb to algorithm-driven brainwashing, embracing the waiting room's liminal nature to explore New Age healing complexities.

Titled Hixiapa ("center” in Wixárika, my ancestral language), it has three elements. The first, Teiwáari, is a large tapestry serving as a niereka—a ritual device for world-building and connecting to other realms. The second, Xamuríiya (meaning "to be caught in a web"), features animated videos that loop within the gallery, acting as both passive entertainment and an active algorithm, subtly drawing viewers in.

The final piece, Mi Uwene (2022), replaces typical waiting room chairs with a sacred shaman’s chair, integrating Indigenous ritual into a contemporary space. By blending computer-generated aesthetics with natural and fantastical materials, I aim to question and reimagine healing notions, exploring the gray areas between helping and harming.

Press

Perpetual Flowering, 2019

For my solo exhibition at the Vincent Price Art Museum, curated by Pilar Tompkins Rivas, I collaborated with artist Saewon Oh to create a unique flower essence for attendees to consume and connect with. The installation featured archival photo prints, printed textiles, video projections with soothing beats and house music, plus testimonials from queer and trans artists in Los Angeles and Tulsa answering: "What do you wish you’d known growing up?" I provided journals for visitors to reflect on their thoughts and feelings. Additionally, I hosted a flower essence-making workshop, where participants created a new essence to take home.

Flower Essence Making Workshop

Perpetual Flowering was exhibited in 2021 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, Florida as a part of Techno-Intimacy, curated by Jessica Borusky

Mirroring Resilience, 2018

As the recipient of the COLA Artist in Residence Grant, I organized the Mirroring Resilience Artist Intensive, featuring five day-long workshops co-facilitated by artists Jesse Fleming, Saewon Oh, Yunuen Rhi, Asher Hartman, Mariel Pastor, and myself. Held at the La Maida Institute, a holistic healing center in North Hollywood, the program offered a transformative space for 24 selected artists. This culminated in the Mirroring Resilience Artist Intensive Exhibition on September 22, 2018, at La Maida Institute, showcasing individual and collaborative art projects. The Artist Intensive and Exhibition were partly funded by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Give US Home Spider, 2017

A Getty-sponsored research and performance project examining environmental justice along freight corridors from the Port of Los Angeles through California's inland communities. I collaborated with environmentalist Demi Espinoza to document how transportation infrastructure and industrial facilities disproportionately impact low-income communities of color. The project culminated in five site-specific ritual performances, drawing on Wixárika indigenous traditions, at key locations including Cabrillo Beach, Tesoro Refinery, an Amazon Fulfillment Center, and sites where the I and others invited to participate in the rituals personally encountered environmental harm. The work bridged data-driven research with ceremonial practices to highlight ongoing environmental racism and community health impacts.

An essay on Give US Home Spider by Edgar Fabián Frías was featured in The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts Academic Quarterly on EcoSomatics on January 15, 2021.

Give US Home Spider was a part of Diálogos a través del tiempo: Diagramas de genealogías e intersecciones de género, curated by Pilar Tompkins Rivas at ArtBo, an international art fair in Bogota, Colombia. Ritual #4 was placed in dialogue with this painting by artist Norman Mejía.