The talk is part of Monuments/AntiMonuments: Between Monuments and Community Engagement, a series of three seminars addressing the shifting historical meaning across different times and communities, including shifts in the relationship between the role of artistic value and what and who can or should be celebrated. 

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, installations, creative action, and altar-making to raise awareness of issues facing underserved communities, youth, and other targeted populations. In various roles, he has worked with Indigenous communities across borders in support of issues of land, access, and self-determination. His work explores healing and reconciliation, as well as memory and place. He’s a former fellow of Monument Lab, and the Intercultural Leadership Institute as well as artist-in-residence at Oxy Arts and AIR (Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator).

This event is co-presented by CCA@CCA and the History of Art and Visual Culture program. It is funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism. The 2021–2022 Creative Citizens Series will focus on four pillars of the Communal Flower, a model for understanding communality in the ancient philosophy and daily practice of various Indigenous nations in southern Mexico: land, communal responsibility, assembly and joy. This event explores assembly.