MEET THE ARTISTS
ALEXA CAYÚQUE
MULTIDISCIPLINARY & SCULPTURE
Mexican-American and San Diego native Alexa Cayúque began as a competitive dancer, earning scholarships and performing with Unity Dance Ensemble before transitioning into visual arts. While pursuing a Bachelor’s in Studio Arts at San Diego State University, they discovered a passion for multidisciplinary art and sculpture. As a queer Latinx woman, Alexa draws from the intersections of identity, movement, and memory to create visual narratives that challenge societal norms. Their work transforms found objects into thought-provoking forms that disrupt expectations and invite reflection. Through sculpture, installation, and performance, Alexa explores authenticity in the face of pressure, amplifying marginalized voices and questioning inherited systems of power.
AMBER SCHNITZIUS
CERAMIC ARTIST
Amber Schnitzius is a ceramic artist working in functional and sculptural vessel forms. She began her ceramics training in high school and college, developing a strong foundation in wheel-thrown techniques. After a hiatus to pursue a corporate career, she returned to clay in 2010 and established a dedicated studio practice by 2017. Relocating to San Diego in 2018 prompted a shift in her work, as the region’s colors, textures, and coastal rhythms began to inform her aesthetic. Her practice then began to transition from wheel-thrown precision to handbuilt forms constructed through coil and slab techniques. Amber’s current work prioritizes material exploration and intuitive making, embracing irregularity and surface variation as a means of cultivating authenticity and a deeper connection to process.
BAILY
LUDWICK
OIL PAINTING
Baily Ludwick is a Chicana artist working in oil painting. Her artwork engages in conversation with the political climate, serving as radical resistance to everyday oppressions in her community and exploring the intimate experiences of Chicanx women. Through a Chicana feminist lens, Ludwick utilizes Aztec mythology and references Aztec iconography to connect to her ancestral heritage. By representing herself and her family as Aztec goddesses, Coyolxauhqui and Toci, she follows the tradition of Chicana artists like Yolanda López, who reimagined cultural icons. Ludwick’s paintings are surreal narratives that draw from the Old Masters of the 17th century. By juxtaposing vibrant, playful colors with gory elements, her work creates political dialogue using symbolism and metaphor. Ludwick’s art is deeply influenced by her grandmother, her Mexican heritage, and the resilient women who inspire her, including punksters, her mother, and their artistic ancestors.
IYARI ARTEAGA
POETRY
Iyari Arteaga, whose name means corazón in Wixárika (Huichol), is an Indigenous Mexican and Puerto Rican poet who writes from a place of deep relationship with ancestor(s), the Earth, and the teachings housed within our own bodies. She believes poetry is a powerful modality of liberation—an embodied practice that allows us to recall, to heal, and to blur the boundaries of time.
Rooted in a background in theater, she understands poetry as a collective act rather than a solitary one, honoring ancestral knowledge, storytelling, and reimagining as necessary acts of survival and creation. She believes poetry speaks to every element of who we are— undeniably complex yet simple beings who are deeply connected.
She has performed nationwide with Teatro Izcalli, self-published The Incantation of My Hands, co-curated exhibits, led community workshops, and earned an MA in Museum Studies from the University of San Francisco.
SARAI ELGUEZABAL
INSTALLATION PHOTOGRAPHY
Sarai Elguezabal is a visual artist based in Tijuana and San Diego whose work is rooted in analog photography and shaped by the borderland experience. Her practice spans film, toy cameras, and experiments with natural elements, capturing the tension and interconnectedness of landscape and place. Elguezabal explores the essence of place, the passage of time, and unseen forces that shape environments, especially in regions marked by transition. Embracing chance as a collaborator, she lets natural processes and unpredictability inform each piece. The photographic process becomes ritual—each exposure a symbolic act between film, light, matter, and accident—inviting viewers to consider the alchemy of creation.
Her work has been exhibited in San Diego (The Front Gallery, Mi Vida Logan Gallery, Luxe Gallery) and in Tijuana (IMAC playas de Tijuana).
SCARLETT
BAILY
VISUAL ARTIST
Mexican American artist Scarlett Baily explores stories of resilience in her multidisciplinary art practice. Working across oil painting, illustration, muralism, and textiles, she brings forward narratives often overlooked by mainstream media and institutions, inspiring empathy and fostering connections between communities.
While her public art projects respond to their environments, her studio practice delves inward. Through cathartic imagery, she confronts uncomfortable emotions to deconstruct the pseudo-self. From gestural to figurative, her work invites viewers to pause and listen to the heart. Bold colors document grief and challenge reproductive taboos, prompting reflection on how we witness pain and loss (even within ourselves) in an achievement society that values productivity over presence.
Baily holds a B.A. in Art History from UCSB, has studied Fine Arts at the Art Students League of New York, apprenticed with renowned Mexico City muralist Manuel Guillen, and pursued Indigenous studies at Kumeyaay Community College.
STEFANIA HERNANDEZ
PHOTOGRAPHY
Stefania Hernandez is a Southern California-based photographer whose work explores culture, belonging, and life in the in-between. Her work takes inspiration from quiet, everyday moments between chores, meals, places, and moments we often consider forgettable. Her images examine cross-cultural life and finding place in the familiar.
Growing up near the San Diego-Tijuana border, Hernandez was profoundly shaped by the two cities, its polarities, and cross-border life. In 2021, an extended trip to Mexico allowed her to photograph her current series, Rosa Mexicano. Rooted in nostalgia, through childhood memories and the lived stories of parents, grandparents, and those that came before, her images create a romantic version of the past, one that lives on in the memory of its people.
Hernandez holds a B.A. in English from UCLA, has studied photography at Gimnasio de Arte y Cultura in Mexico City, and pursued film studies at Arte7 Escuela de Cine.
“Healing involves recognizing, that is, raising the existence of intrapsychic conflict to the level of consciousness."
Byung-Chul Han,The Burnout Society, 2015, 45.