Happy to announce that I am a 2026 Jones Artist Award recipient! Thank you @weingartenartgroup and @houstonendowment for awarding my project Es Una Lucha and my practice with this wonderful opportunity. Es Una Lucha is installed at the Houston Endowment offices in an exhibition titled “The Hardest Love We Carry”. Congratulations to all the awardees! I’m excited to celebrate with everyone soon. 🥳
From the Houston Endowment:
Poet Jane Hirshfield once wrote, “Hope is the hardest love we carry,” a line that inspired the theme for the 2026 Houston Endowment Jones Artist Awards Program. Created in 2023, the program aims to recognize local artists and reflect the many stories and perspectives of Greater Houston’s residents. More than 100 artists responded to the open call, submitting reflections on what hope means, how it endures, and how it lives within their communities.
In collaboration with Weingarten Art Group, Houston Endowment selected 10 Houston creatives—eight individual artists and one artistic duo—as 2026 Jones Artists. “The Jones Artist Awards Program reflects Houston Endowment’s belief that artists play a vital role in helping our region understand itself,” said Ann B. Stern, president and CEO of Houston Endowment. “The 2026 Jones Artists remind us that hope lives in creativity, community, and the courage to imagine what’s possible. By investing in local artists and the stories they carry, we are strengthening Houston’s cultural fabric and supporting a more vibrant, connected region.”
Along with guidance and support to strengthen their creative careers, this year’s selected artists will participate in one of three installations at Houston Endowment’s office.
Photography by Rony Canales courtesy of Houston Endowment and Weingarten Art Group.
Thrilled to share that my new project Superneighborhood 27: The “Gulfton Ghetto” is being funded by the Idea Fund! Thank you so much to the jurors for picking my proposal for this opportunity and Diverse Works, Project Row Houses, Aurora Picture Show, and the Andy Warhol Foundation. This project is a continuation of my series Monsignor Oscar Romero Square (Pico Blvd and Vermont Ave) that was made in Los Angeles. This project and my method of embodied image making with cameraless photography and performance would not exist without Los Angeles and its Central American diaspora. I’m eternally grateful for everything LA inspired me to make and I’m excited to build on that foundation in Gulfton, Houston, TX. More details on the project will be presented at the grant reception in March.
From the Idea Fund:
The Idea Fund supports innovative, experimental, public-facing visual arts projects that expand our understanding of how art exists in the world or exemplify new ways of working in, for, and with community.
Jessica Carolina González – Superneighborhood 27: The “Gulfton Ghetto”
González will examine the histories embedded in apartment complexes built during the 1970s oil boom, globally connected businesses catering to Central American immigrants, and communal squares through cameraless photography and on-site performance.
Photographs in slide 1 & 2 by Muna Malik @munamalikart
Honored to share that ‘Our love cannot be quelled by the boundary of the flesh’ is now forever archived in Dra. Ana Briz’s moving article ‘Love is in Abundance,’ published in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies. Deep gratitude to Ana, the teams at the LA Dance Project, LACE, and especially Selene Preciado, and Juan Silverio for the opportunity to present this performance in 2024.
In the words of @anaextina “By valuing the presence of love and practicing it in our everyday life, we regain hope, community, and the power to make a difference. To love fearlessly and in belief of divinity and the sanctity of life is to challenge and change what informs forces of domination.”
In the midst of everything we’re experiencing, it is my hope that we draw from love to fill our cups and stoke our rage. 🤍✊🏼
In disbelief. Muriel Hasbún was one of one. I’ll never forget how meaningful it was to show alongside her after following her work for some time. A Salvadoran trailblazer and mentor to many, now an ancestor. Rest in power, querida Muriel. ❤️🩹🕊️
Thrilled to share that my film Musa Paradisiaca is a finalist for Admit One: Analog Film Showcase organized by the Houston Cinema Arts Society and FLATS. I hope y’all will join us next Monday for the screening! Ticket link is in my bio 🔗 More info below:
Join FLATS and Houston Cinema Arts Society for the 4th annual Admit One: Analog Film Showcase on Monday, May 18th at MATCH (Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston).
Admit One is a night dedicated to the tactile magic of analog film and photography. From Super 8 to VHS, this showcase celebrates Texas-based filmmakers keeping celluloid alive.
Photography Exhibit: 6:30pm-10:00pm
Film Screening: 7:30pm-9:00pm
Post-screening conversation with filmmakers: 9:00pm-9:30pm
Musa Paradisiaca is an 8mm film and 3-channel video installation interlacing sites of Salvadoran cultural influence in two major cities of the United States with sites of historical significance in the capital and the countryside of El Salvador. The films feature El Salvador, Los Angeles, and Houston, montaged with textures of plantain tree leaves, glitter, and fire. As the film plays, the sites change, blurring the distinctions between geographies. The soundscape of the film combines ambient sound with field recordings and a reading by the artist and her mother of Monsignor Romero’s last sermon in Spanish and English. The film starts with “El rascar es sanar, aunque arda” “scratching is healing, even if it burns”, as a proposition to consider suppressed Salvadoran histories. Musa Paradisiaca was produced at The Center for Ethnographic Media Arts University of Southern California. A 15 minute excerpt will be screened for Admit One: Analog Film Showcase.
Wrapped up the semester with potlucks, field trips, and final critiques in sculpture, 2D design, and art appreciation. This was my first semester teaching 4 classes and I can’t believe how fast the time went! I learned so much from my students and am humbled by their kind words about me and the impact my classes had on them. This work is so hard, but it also really rocks ❤️🔥
Emergency Index is one of those publications that I revisit every now and then because I love it so much. Volume 8 contains one of my favorite performance pieces to stage: Machete, Pando, Corbo, Cuma, Guarizama. I flipped through it while writing today and for the first time noticed the names of two formidable performance artists that I did not expect to perform with and become friends with years later in Los Angeles! When I first moved to LA, I was reluctant to perform for a number of reasons, but the work still found me and so did the vibrant community within it. The world is so small and so big at the same time. 💗
Opening stills of my film Musa Paradisiaca. This project started in 2022 as part of a Transborder Engraving installation and then transformed into a 3 channel video installation for my solo thesis show. Now, I’m transforming this piece once more as a single channel, short experimental film that can qualify for film festivals and be seen outside of the fine art realm. My hope is for this film to be screened as many times and in as many places as possible. 💗
Musa Paradisiaca is an 8mm film interlacing sites of Salvadoran cultural influence in two major cities of the United States with sites of historical significance in the capital and the countryside of El Salvador. The films feature El Salvador, Los Angeles, and Houston, montaged with textures of plantain tree leaves, glitter, and fire. As the film plays, the sites change, blurring the distinctions between all three geographies. The soundscape of the film combines ambient sound with field recordings and a reading by the artist and her mother of Monsignor Romero’s last homily in Spanish and English. The film starts with “El rascar es sanar, aunque arda” “scratching is healing, even if it burns”, as a proposition to consider suppressed Salvadoran histories and ideologies that manifest in the cityscapes of Los Angeles and Houston as it becomes home to large populations of the diaspora. Musa Paradisiaca was produced at The Center for Ethnographic Media Arts University of Southern California.
Field tripping all over Houston this week with my Design I students. This class has been so rewarding to teach and I got so lucky with this bunch. They’re very dedicated and because of that they’ve grown so much. I can see it in every project they make and every critique we have and that’s all I can ask for 🥰 Thank you @amaaanndda , @___krisv , and @emergentandco for hosting us and being generous with your time and knowledge.
Made it through day one of Uncle Bob’s Photo Zine Market and my presentation for the Central American Slide Jam at Lawndale! Thank you Uncle Bob’s team for putting the market together and ALMAAHH and Lawndale for bringing a part of Houston’s Central American artist community together. It was lovely to hear about the different practices and organizing efforts sustained in the city 💗 The arts activities don’t stop here! Come thru tomorrow to Fotofest from 11AM to 4PM to catch the last day of the market. I still have some Es Una Lucha zines and bookmarks left!
Printed a 2nd run of Es Una Lucha to sell at Uncle Bob’s Photo Zine Market Saturday, April 11 and Sunday, April 12. Come through to Silver Street Studios from 11am-5pm the 11th and 11am-4pm the 12th to get yourself a copy! If you’re not in Houston, you can DM me to save you one.
