A Conversation with Favianna Rodriguez: World-Making through Decolonial Feminist Artivism

A Conversation with Favianna Rodriguez: World-Making through Decolonial Feminist Artivism

Xamuel Bañales

This essay is a conversation with Favianna Rodriguez, an award-winning transdisciplinary artist, cultural organizer, and social justice activist based in Oakland, California. Favianna’s projects include visual and public art, writing, cultural organizing, and building power via institutions. Along with her extensive studio practice, she is the co-founder and president of The Center for Cultural Power, a US-based organization that empowers artists to disrupt the status quo and ignite social change. The interview highlights decolonizing feminist world-making possibilities in Favianna’s art and activism (or artivism) while traveling through critical topics, such as food, porn, and psychedelics. Committed to the principles of a decolonial feminist praxis, one goal of the essay is to contribute to transcending the coloniality of gender through solidarity and collaboration. Another purpose is to advance conocimiento and inspire others to (continue to) enact decolonial feminisms to further transform.

Keywords: Art / Activism / Artivism / Decolonial Feminisms / Food / Porn / Psychedelics

I met Favianna Rodriguez (see Figure 1) at the beginning of the fall 1997 semester at Casa Joaquín Murrieta (or Casa Joaquín), a residential housing cooperative for UC Berkeley undergraduates that was founded in 1970 by Chicano/Latino student activists (see Delgado 2009; Luna 2019; The Greenlining Institute). At Casa Joaquín, Favianna and I worked together as kitchen cooks, often having critical conversations or dancing and singing along to cumbia, merengue, or other Latinx musical genres, while we boiled large pots of beans, stirred rice in oiled pans, and zealously prepared the dinner menu of the evening. We lived on

©2023 Feminist Formations, Vol. 35 No. 1 (Spring) pp. 154–194

the same oor in separate rooms, and we often saw each other in the hallway on the way to or from campus. Since then, my feminist friendship (Johnson and Leiper 2021) with Favianna continued as we crossed paths in political/cultural spaces in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Favianna is an award-winning transdisciplinary artist, cultural organizer, and social justice activist based in Oakland, California. Favianna makes prints and posters that incorporate political slogans, assembles collages with varying shapes, colors, and textures, and paints large-scale vivid murals that feature “regular” people (Vox Creative 2022). Her art and activism (or artivism) (see Sandoval and Latorre 2008; Quintanilla 2020; Becerra 2021) address a variety of social topics, such as migration, gender justice, climate change, racial equity, and sexual liberation. Furthermore, Favianna’s collaborations include Ben & Jerry’s anti-Donald Trump-inspired ice cream avor “Pecan Resist” (Mayer 2018), public art commissions with the City of San Francisco (Orvino 2022), and a partnership with Joey Soloway of Topple Productions that helped to create the Disruptors Fellowship for marginalized voices in the entertainment industry (Rodriguez 2020).

In addition to co-founding and serving as president of The Center for Cultural Power (The Center for Cultural Power), Favianna helped to initiate various cultural and political organizations, like the EastSide Arts Alliance (Eastside Cultural Center) and Presente.org (Presente.org), the largest Latino

Figure 1 Image of Favianna Rodriguez in her studio standing between plants and artwork (2022). Photo by Bobby Gordon. Image courtesy of Favianna Rodriguez.

online organizing community in the United States (Favianna Rodriguez). Additionally, Favianna was a coeditor of the book Reproduce & Revolt/Reproduce y Rebélate (MacPhee and Rodriguez 2008), which offers a prominent collection of graphics by political artists from around the planet. Favianna is an established artist who has de ed many structural challenges, not only personally but also professionally, especially in the art world in the United States, which struggles with erasing, whitewashing, or taking seriously Latinx art and artists (Dávila 2020).

As an Ethnic Studies professor, over the years I have used Favianna’s artwork as teaching material. There are several online podcasts and interviews that showcase Favianna and her work (e.g., Boyer 2020; Orvino 2020; Vox Creative 2022), and academic books have featured her art on their covers (e.g., Truax 2018). In addition, scholars have analyzed Favianna’s artwork through multiple angles, such as her feminist contributions to decolonial thought (Pérez 2019) and in uence on contemporary social justice efforts (see Becerra 2021). However, I had not come across a scholarly essay about her life and artivism that I could use in courses for a general student population. To address the gap, in 2018 I informally brought up the possibility to Favianna of conducting an interview. The idea was great, but many professional commitments and limited time halted the process. Fortunately, we had the opportunity to resume the project a few years later.

In the fall semester of 2020, after the second outbreak of Covid-19, CSU Stanislaus invited Favianna to conduct a virtual poster-making workshop via Zoom for the campus community, which included students from the Chicano/a/xLatino/a/x Cultural Production course that I taught then. In the workshop, Favianna weaved together her art practice, critical topics, and personal lived experiences, such as unapologetically sharing her abortion stories to destigmatize the subject (PopSugar 2022). Students communicated that the workshop was engaging and inspiring as many felt empowered to express their own stories creatively. Thereafter, Favianna and I agreed on a date and time for the interview, which took place online via Zoom on November 8, 2020. After transcribing and organizing the interview, I met with Favianna again via Zoom on November 18, 2022, and then exchanged several emails, to follow up on edits, clarity, and ow.

Decolonial feminisms informs and grounds this essay. As a political struggle and theoretical framework, decolonial feminisms has roots in Latin America (Lugones 2007, 2010; Martínez 2019; Pitts, Ortega, and Medina 2020; Curiel 2021; Espinosa-Miñoso, Lugones, and Maldonado-Torres 2021; Martínez and Agüero 2021; Martínez-Cairo and Buscemi 2021) and is in complex interrelation with Black, US Latinx, and Native American feminist (or women of color) thought (Pérez 2010; Arvin, Tuck, and Morril 2013; Lee-Oliver 2019; Velez 2019; Alarcón et al 2020). Thus, referencing decolonial feminisms in the plural is important given the different nuances and contexts of the theories and praxes. Central components of decolonial feminisms includes af rming that gender is a

construct of modernity/coloniality, expanding the narrow treatment of gender in theories and analyses about decolonization, and centralizing resistance, plurality, and coalition to defy the logics of categorial, hierarchical, and dichotomous colonial power (Sandoval 2000; Lugones 2007 and 2010; Pérez 2010; Rodrigues 2022). As feminist philosopher María Lugones advocated, working towards a decolonial feminism includes “learn[ing] about each other as resisters to the coloniality of gender at the colonial difference, without necessarily being an insider to the worlds of meaning from which resistance to the coloniality arises” (Lugones 2010, 753).

This essay centralizes decolonial feminist politics in multiple ways. Favianna and I are dedicated to the principles of decolonial feminisms that recognize and seek to transcend the coloniality of gender (Lugones 2007 and 2010) through coalition and solidarity. In addition, the interview highlights decolonizing feminist world-making possibilities (Lugones 1987; Alarcón et al 2020; Alcoff 2020) in Favianna’s artivism while traveling through critical topics, such as food, porn, and psychedelics. Finally, along with serving as an academic resource, the conversation advances conocimiento (Anzaldúa 2015) in which living memory and embodied knowledge contribute to “knowing and telling” (Blackwell 2011, 10), potentially inspiring others to (continue to) enact decolonial feminisms to further transform (Bañales forthcoming).

Attuned to the colonizing assumptions, motivations, and values that often inform traditional Western research practices (Smith 1999), this interview falls in line with our decolonial feminist politics and friendship, instead. The conversations between Favianna and I occurred in an informal manner and with a playful attitude, which “involves openness to surprise, openness to being a fool, openness to self-construction or reconstruction and to construction or reconstruction of the ‘worlds’ we inhabit playfully” (Lugones 1987, 17). Since a relationship of trust or rapport (Thwaites 2017) had already been established long before the interview, the dialogue was open, “not worrying about competence, not being self-important, not taking norms as sacred” (Lugones 1987, 17). Moreover, as feminist border thinking beings with forked tongues (see Anzaldua 1987; Mignolo and Tlostanova 2006; Lugones 2010), the style of the interview involves colloquialisms, sentence structures, or vernacular that may deviate from the linearity of “standard” English—what Jamaica Kincaid named as “the language of the criminal” (Kincaid 1988, 32).

In Conversation with Favianna Rodriguez

Xamuel Bañales (XB): Scholars consider the convergence of activism and artistic production as “artivism” (Sandoval and Latorre 2008; Quintanilla 2020; Becerra 2021). As Angélica Becerra underscores, you are one of several twentyrst century artivists who are changing contemporary social justice efforts (Becerra 2021). Please describe your work as an artivist.

Favianna Rodriguez (FR): My artivist work presents a vision of what’s possible, and I do it through images, art forms, and different mediums. I also do my artivism—what I project and the story that I tell—through social media. Now, as I start to produce short lms, I am doing artivism with video. I feel that my artivism is about a practice of truth and reconciliation around what has happened to us as marginalized people and imagining what the future can be. In the past, I often called myself an interdisciplinary visual artist, but I think that what I do is more than that; it is world shifting through objects and experiences. I make things, but I also help to create experiences through actions, like when I grow weed or cook for people.

I just harvested my rst weed plant and there is an art to its process and cultivation. I see weed as medicina, so how I grow it will impact the healing experience it facilitates. With food, I’ve been doing “Fed by Favi” pop-ups in Los Angeles, California, which is about my new lifestyle where I talk about cannabis, masturbation, and being vegan (see Figure 2). I create an experience where I dress slutty or super sexy, prepare food, and take people through a fourcourse meal, while I witness the participants’ reactions. It’s been off the hook! I’ve also been taking erotic photos of myself naked (see Figure 3), and I was the executive producer of my rst porn that I launched for the 2020 US presidential election. My art is a blend of all of that and it is part of my “Fed by Favi” project.

(XB): Wait a minute! (Chuckling) I thought that maybe we would end the conversation with such topics, so it’s exciting that we are just beginning. It seems that your “Fed by Favi” project is partly about reclaiming the power of the erotic (Lorde 1984), and that you view pornography in a similar light as critical scholars who analyze the subject through feminist/queer/trans studies or approaches (Mikkola 2017; Pezzutto and Cornella 2020; Rodríguez 2014 and 2023). Please say more about the porn that you mention and why you created “Fed by Favi”.

(FR): I feel like I am world building. As an artist-activist or artivist, sometimes the things I talk about—like masturbation—or whenever I pose naked on my social media, I sense an anti-sex vibe. So, I am having to create an almost separate body of work so that I can be explicit and take people through a sexpositive experience. In doing so, it’s like asking people for their consent upfront so that I can take them through that door and go into another portal. This is one part of my art. Then there is another part where I want to train artists and activists, and that’s why I run a non-pro t organization that involves building people power. I try to create different worlds and see how they intersect, and I feel these spaces can be very regenerative. For example, I have a body of artwork that celebrates my deep connection to cooking and plants, which represents my reciprocal relationship to nature (see Figure 4 and 5). When I work on my garden, things grow; when I cook, people have a visceral and embodied

Figure 2 Photo from Fed by Favi series in Los Feliz, California (2020). Photo by Bobby Gordon. Image courtesy of Favianna Rodriguez.

Figure 3. “I got options” (2021). Photo by Bobby Gordon. Image courtesy of Favianna Rodriguez.

Figure 4. “Favi’s Cocina 11” (2021). Collage with linoleum block, photo transfer, monoprint and screen print elements on Cotton Rag Paper (22.5 × 15 inches). Image courtesy of Favianna Rodríguez.

experience. Creating feels like it’s my superpower that I must use. For me, it’s about being in our bodies, like healing, eating, harvesting, and smoking weed. “Fed by Favi” is about this.

Returning to the lm—I don’t even like the word “porn” because it puts my creative work in a loaded category. I want to make explicit, more accurate depictions of sex that feel joyful and sexy, that are part of a good story. When I

Figure 5 “Saturday at Home with My Plants II” (2019). Monoprint collage on birch panel (30 × 24 × 1 inches). Image courtesy of Favianna Rodríguez.

was working on the 2020 US presidential elections, I wanted to nd new ways to encourage people to vote. I thought, can we reach people politically through sex by making porn? We did. The short lm is called Putting the “O” in Voting (B 2020) (see Figure 6) and it was done in collaboration between Favianna.com Studios, Lotus Lain, and Gordon B Productions (Parkman 2020). The lm blends civic engagement and sexual pleasure, and it is about two young voters of color who are a couple: a Latina woman (Marina Maree) and a Black man (Scotty P). In a bedroom scene, the couple talk erotically about voting early, “giving a fuck” about democracy, and then proceed to have sex. The well-known porn site Pornhub (Pornhub) featured Putting the “O” in Voting on their webpage. I had a reporter hit me up and say that the piece was “really good” and that they liked many of the details. They saw the lm as a work of art and featured it on PinkLabel.TV (Peepshow Media). This project is also part of the “Fed by Favi” body of work.

(XB): The artivism that you describe reminds me of María Lugones’ concepts of “world”-traveling and “world”-making (Lugones 1987), where the meaning and practices of many “worlds”—or several possible spaces—overlap. The metaphors describe navigating relational processes that involve the embodiment of plural and non-static subjectivities to understand and learn about difference (Herron, 2017; Alarcón 2020; Alcoff 2020; Baldwin 2020; Dewart et al 2020). In many

Figure 6 Film still of Putting the “O” in Voting (2020). Image courtesy of Favianna Rodriguez.

aspects, your artivism creates openings and spaces that serve as an invitation to travel into other worlds, pointing to new horizons and ways of being. You mentioned that there have been negative reactions to the topic of sex and sexuality in your artivist public life and work. Can you talk more about this?

(FR): Consent is very important to me. Given that some people are in a transition towards being more accepting of sex and sexuality, I think that the best thing I can do is be explicit about the subjects. However, if I post a photo on social media of myself with a zucchini, for example, and I hold it as if it was my cock, people report it, or like 100 people will unfollow me as a result. In other words, many react negatively to content they consider provocative or controversial. Because this happens, I create another “world” where people can enter it with an af rmative “yes.” This world is about psychedelics, cannabis, and food, where I try to tell the story of how these things are medicines that are from the earth to heal. How can we get into a relationship to understand this?

My art is in adrianne maree brown’s book Pleasure Activism (2019), and I really like her framework of combining erotic and emotional desires with organizing work against oppression. I think about how we can fully be in our bodies in our activist work, and how pleasure can activate this. Colonial capitalist thinking makes people believe that they rst work hard and then play later; this idea that one can only have pleasure or enjoy it after it has been earned. It is ingrained in people to view pleasure as a privilege. I was brought up with this belief, and it’s fucking bullshit! It is a right to be able to feel joy and pleasure in one’s body, and there are many ways one can incorporate them. It doesn’t mean you have to buy sexual toys or expensive books to engage. Pleasure is really all around us and available. How do you create spaciousness to love yourself, know your body, and experience all the wonderful things that it can do? I think pleasure and joy are fundamental principles for social justice work that we do. For example, the ght to unionize or for fair wages is partly so that workers can have more joy in their lives and with loved ones. I reject the notion that our bodies are made to only work. We have a body that we should be able to fully enjoy, and that involves pleasure and joy.

I also think about intergenerational healing. I am the rst generation in my bloodline that can express myself and be a “full-time” artist. I re ect on my father’s lineage as a Black Peruvian—how I carry the trauma of his racialized experience in my body—and how I can be part of the generation to restore the pain. I believe one must witness the respective trauma then move it through deep healing. For me, part of my art includes doing medicine or setting up camps in the desert at Burning Man with women of color and others who intentionally want to go through ceremony together. Using plant-based medicines and psychedelics is like enacting accelerated generational healing to decolonize. In fact, I created a series of collages that are inspired by my transformation through plant-based healing (see Figures 7 and 8).

(XB): You raise several important points. For example, you mentioned consent— when a person agrees to the desires or proposal of another in mutual approval. This makes me think about how consent, then, challenges heteropatriarchal colonialism/coloniality, which is based upon stealing land, enacting violence, and oppressing people across race, gender, and sexuality (Smith 1999; Lugones 2007; Castañeda 2011; Mallon 2011; Maldonado-Torres 2016; DiPietro 2020).

(FR): Absolutely! The current social and political context is about domination and extraction, controlling, and taking. This has been normalized in Western culture. We must move towards a way of life in which we are aligned with nature, in balance and not dominating, to have a regenerative relationship with earth, in which we think about how we are being good stewards, replenishing, and giving back. I learned this through gardening, which is why I grow my

Figure 7. “Plant Medicine VI” (2019). Monotype collage on wood panel (12 × 12 × 1 inches). Image courtesy of Favianna Rodriguez.

food and cannabis medicine; they are very much a part of my artform because they activate all parts of my body to engage in a decolonizing somatic practice. Under colonial racial capitalism (Koshy et al 2022), our bodies are conditioned to be like vessels that violate nature. In contrast, through positive corporal experiences, people can see, feel, and embody their liberation, which is why I am about pleasure, speci cally orgasm. I’ve done several prints celebrating pussies that are inspired by exploring my body, leading with pleasure—not with fear, shame, or guilt—and getting in touch with my orgasms (see Figure 9). I think that surrendering to orgasm and feeling our bodies in their fullest joy is healing. Unfortunately, colonialism has attempted to take this joy away from us! Colonizing society tries to silence the topic of sex and orgasm, and we usually carry the weight of this trauma on our backs— entonces lo temenos que sacar or get it out.

Figure 8. “Plant Medicine II” (2019). Monotype collage and photo transfer on wood panel (12 × 12 × 1 inches). Image courtesy of Favianna Rodriguez.

Figure 9 “Deliberate Orgasm AP 1” (2015). Monotype, color pencil, and linoleum block on handmade Korean Hanji Paper (25 × 19.25 inches). Image courtesy of Favianna Rodriguez.

It’s not just about orgasm, though, which is why I also combine sex with food. Trauma is also in what we consume and eat—this is why I cook vegan dishes. Colonialism has forced us to rape and pillage nature and animal life. What is being done to animals and how do we treat them? The animal agricultural industry poses serious threats to the environment, climate, workers, wildlife, and destroys land, such as in the Amazon. I feel we must heal and get aligned with the natural world. We must cleanse the past, readjust the pallet, and purge like one does with ayahuasca medicine. In an ayahuasca ceremony, I got a vision that I was at a cauldron, making food for warriors that helped them to have a multi-generational view of why it’s important to resist and transform systems of oppression. By making the caldo or soup, I was like a vessel to help with liberation; it was about making things, like my art or food. I have always loved to cook—you know this, Xamuel!

(XB): Yes, that is how we connected—working and making food in the kitchen of Casa Joaquín. I remember you once cooked a Peruvian vegetarian dish with potatoes and eggs.

Figure 10 “Study for Ancestral Food Legacies I” (2021). Collage with linoleum block and screen print elements on Cotton Rag Paper (22 5 × 30 inches). Image courtesy of Favianna Rodriguez.

(FR): ¡Papa a la Huancaína! I had a gift for a variety of cooking then, but I hadn’t connected it to my art practice. Now, I cook plant-based food and it’s like casting a spell to realign with the earth and purge the colonizer white man’s diet. The typical Western diet is literally killing us—just look at what our gente is dying from, like poor nutrition, illnesses, and other health problems. Unfortunately, we are usually not connected to our ancestral diets. For me, plant-based cooking is one way that I share my love for earth and how she nourishes us, and I made a collection of prints that focus on ancestral food knowledge (see Figures 10 and 11).

(XB): Food sovereignty, decolonizing our diets, and practicing reciprocal relationships with the land, water, plants, and animals in sustainable ways (Kimmerer 2013; Calvo and Esquibel 2015; Coté 2016; Montford and Taylor 2020; Calderón Farfán, Dussán Chaux, and Arias Torres 2021) are critical for earth mother Pachamama, our wellness, and survival—topics that your artivism addresses. In your ayahuasca vision, it’s like the cauldron was the holder of your magic: it’s through your hands and what you create that you nourish. Whether it is though art, food, or porn—for lack of a better word—or something else,

Figure 11. “Study for Ancestral Food Legacies II” (2021). Collage with linoleum block and screen print elements on Cotton Rag Paper (22.5 × 30 inches). Image courtesy of Favianna Rodriguez.

what you make can serve as medicine for collective healing to transcend beyond colonialism/coloniality.

(FR): The power of imagination is huge! This is why when I have an orgasm or eat nourishing food, I really tap in and feel connected through a deep, bodily experience. I feel my body, taste buds, and energy go up and down my spine. I feel! I actually feel! Land extraction on a global scale is killing our species and destroying life, and the pain that colonial racial capitalist system produces has numbed us. Feeling offsets this pain by integrating and aligning us to mother earth. We have signi cant shifts that we must make, and I see my work as an artivist as bringing life. I think about this when I am gardening (see Figure 12), that I am here to contribute to making another world. I love growing food and making it, in service of natural cycles and the web of life.

(XB): Please talk about the path that led you to your current artivism.

(FR): I was born in 1978. Growing up in the 1980s and 90s in east Oakland, California, shook me up. It was the era of AIDS and when former President Ronald Reagan expanded and reinforced many of Nixon’s War on Drug policies, which had racist consequences. For example, there were harsh penalties targeting people of color for nonviolent drug crimes that led to a massive increase in incarcerations. Drugs—like crack cocaine—devastated urban communities and Oakland was one of them. As a kid, I witnessed things like heavy police presence, gang violence, and what drugs do to underserved communities. I often felt unsafe, but I knew that it wasn’t normal to be so scared.

I was a young creative kid and made a lot of art that my dad would hang on walls at home. He taught me how to express myself, to read, and to speak in Spanish. My two immigrant parents were entrepreneurs who didn’t go to college. They were supportive of me having a voice, but they also wanted me to follow a traditional route. I was an honor roll student with a 4.2 GPA and was awarded prizes for academic achievements. I was a high achiever since I was a kid, and I think it had to do with my parents working all the time. My accomplishments were due to hyper productivity—which I eventually came to realize was not healthy. I excelled academically and practically got a full scholarship to attend UC Berkeley. My mom was a travel agent at some point, so we had opportunities to take trips while I was growing up. Seeing other parts of the world really helped me to realize that feeling unsafe in Oakland wasn’t right and that I had options.

I lived in Mexico City for about three years as a teenager. There was an expansiveness of culture in Mexico City that differs from what I learned in schools in the United States where white supremacy clouds everything. For example, the history I was taught in the United States mostly centered white people and their experiences. Although Latin America also tends to privilege

Figure 12 “Favi in Oakland” (2022). Photo by Bobby Gordon. Image courtesy of Favianna Rodriguez.

colonial knowledge, I was exposed to different things in Mexico City. Located in the Third World or Global South, Mexico City plays a prominent in uential role in Latin America, which has been deeply affected by European and American imperialism. In Mexico, I was exposed to muralism, revolutionaries like Simón Bolivar and Che Guevara, and Nueva Trova, which is a movement of Cuban music with political content that emerged after their revolution of 1959. Being in Mexico City helped me to understand the spectrum of a Latin American experience in a way that I never have in the United States. The United States does not present people of Latin American background in complex ways but through simplistic and stereotypical narratives.

After living in Mexico City, I came back to Oakland. The Fruitvale neighborhood that I grew up in had a strong Chicano movement, cultural murals, and hip hop was happening. I started organizing and created the rst Latino student club at San Leandro High School. I also helped to walk out students at my school in protest of racist propositions in California at the time. I was a young activist because I knew that things were whack! The people who helped me to organize during the mid and late-1990s included Luis Sánchez, through groups like Ollin, which used to be called Student Empowerment Program and then Voices of Struggle.

Before I went to college, I was like, “Chicano power” and “Fuck the system!” I used to go to Casa Joaquín, attend math and science programs that they had at UC Berkeley, and connect with students from Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (or MEChA) (see Licón 2014), who would come and organize at our high school. That connection was very valuable because I thought, “cool, once I graduate from high school, this is the community that I can be a part of when I am in college.” When I went to college and moved to Casa Joaquín, I met other artists, like Jesús Barraza—co-founder of Dignidad Rebelde (see Barraza and Cervantes 2016; Barraza 2019)—who at the time was learning about the internet. This changed my life and opened the doorway to new technologies. I taught myself how to build my own website and how to code when the internet was very basic with html pages. I studied architecture in college but then I got more involved with organizing. For example, I helped with the 1999 hunger strike to save Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley from budget cuts (see Luna 2019).

In 1999 is also when I got an internship with the Center of the Study for Political Graphics (Center for the Study of Political Graphics) in Los Angeles, California, and this opportunity came from The Getty Marrow Multicultural Undergraduate Internship program (The Getty Foundation). It was the rst time that I looked at political and solidarity posters of the Black Panthers, Cuban revolution, and feminist activism. They opened my mind! I thought, “Wow, I could be making political posters of things that are important to me. That’s what I want to do and get them out into the world.”

Figure 13. “Del Ojo de Dios no se escapa nadie” (1999). Screen print (26 × 20 inches). Image courtesy of Favianna Rodriguez.

Afterward, I had the opportunity to get an internship with Self Help Graphics and Art in East Los Angeles (Self Help Graphics & Art). Being in Los Angeles nourished my ties with the creative and activist scene in the area, which included hella Chicano organizing and arts, such as the punk-rock fusion collective Ollin. Self Help connected the network through community events like the Día de los Muertos, and art and activism moved through a lot of spaces. The way I got connected to the internship was when I took Dr. Laura Pérez’s Chicano Studies art class at UC Berkeley in 1998. She had invited the artist Yreina D. Cervántez to class, who is known for her murals, printmaking, and multimedia painting (see Pérez 2019). Yreina saw my work—she really saw me—and encouraged me to continue to develop my artistic talent. When she curated the Maestras Atelier XXXIII at Self Help Graphics in 1999 —which was the rst all-female major silkscreen workshop there—I was invited to be a part of this. I participated in the Maestras Atelier alongside many talented Chicana artists, like Diane Gamboa, Barbara Carrasco, Alma López, and Yolanda López—it was tight!

As part of the Meastras Atelier, I created “Del ojo de Dios no se escapa nadie,” (Figure 13), which is about patriarchy’s abusive and objectifying sexual behavior. When I think about that image, I feel like it represents the essence of who I am. That was the rst art major piece that I made. It centers an openlegged gure with eyes covering the crotch. Decades after I made it, despite having a more sophisticated analysis, I feel the same way about the message. As womb carriers, we have the power to create life, which is the basis of how this universe exists. For me, whether it’s about pussy power or talking about our relationship to earth, the image represents the essence of who I am: being in my body/embodied, challenging colonial norms. I feel all of this is represented in that phase where I created that piece. Looking back, it’s uncanny. I know I have evolved with my art and that I am a very different artist since then, but when it comes to that piece, I am like, “wow, that is the essence of my art.” I nd it amazing that young Favi was thinking like that, but it’s also not surprising.

Then, in 2000, I got pregnant and had an abortion. I was like, “You know what? I want to do what I want to, which is to be an artist. I am learning skills and technologies that are not part of my education at UC Berkeley.” I failed a lot of classes because I fell behind due to my activism, and I didn’t bother to do anything about it; I wanted to start my own business and gure things out myself. That is around the time that I helped to start a small graphic design company called Tumis. Jesús Barraza was a part of the business and I worked with people like Tony Carranza who is an artist based in the Central Valley of California in Fresno. Through Tumis and using my computer skills, I realized that people would pay me for my art. I’m good at selling—my mom taught me that—and the business was successful. Then I had a small art studio called Taller Tupac Amaru with Jesús, where he started helping me do screen-prints. I continued to

be involved in the arts and organizing, like co-founding the EastSide Arts Alliance, which is a multiracial cultural center in Oakland, California. I got to meet and interact with important historical activists like Emory Douglas, Kathleen Cleaver, Amiri Baraka, Bobby Seal, and Yuri Kochiyama. I was surrounded and part of a vibrant political community.

As I continued to create art, in 2009 is when I worked with journalist Roberto Lovato and co-founded Presente.org, which the largest Latinx online organization that advances social justice with culture, media, and technology (Presente.org). The organization helped to remove Lou Dobbs—a racist white American political commentator from mainstream television at the time—and we helped with the Trail of Dreams campaign when undocumented folks walked from Florida to Washington D.C. (see Solórzano 2022). We helped to challenge racist violence, like when members from the US-Mexico border vigilante nativist group Minutemen Project killed Raul Flores Jr. and his nine-year-old daughter Brisenia Flores, and we helped to activate people to support the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the Supreme Court. Then, in 2010, the Arizona senate introduced and eventually passed the SB1070 —the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” which became known as the “show me your papers law” for targeting brown people. Chicano activist musician Zack de la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine organized Sound Strike to boycott Arizona (Kraker 2010). It inspired a lot of musicians to stop playing in Arizona because it had become a laboratory for designing several racist policies. What happened in Arizona then was similar to the racist legislation in California during the 1990s, like the passing of Propositions 184, 187, 209, 227, and 21 (HoSang 2010; Bañales 2012; Luna 2019). Presente.org was modeled after the Color of Change (Color of Change), a progressive nonpro t racial justice organization in Oakland, California. I had met the folks who started Color of Change and they taught me to combine technology and activism. However, by 2011, I asked myself, “In this movimiento, where are the artists at? How can we do cultural strategy without the artists—we need them! Yo, I am an artist and I need to advocate for us.”

(XB): Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, community members created several cultural political organizations throughout the United States that are still active. In California, examples include Self Help Graphics in Los Angeles and Galería de la Raza in San Francisco (see Jackson 2009; Galería de la Raza). Despite such spaces, did you believe there was a void in the cultural political arts in Oakland at that time?

(FR): I think that there were not enough investments, resources, or spaces for cultural arts of which my generation could take advantage. A lot of the cultural arts organizations were struggling, or many hadn’t really grown. This is largely

due to the systemic racism of the mainstream artworld and funding streams, which is why we must demand investment in the cultural arts. At the time, I felt like I needed to organize with artists. I couldn’t just be an artist in a movement space—I needed to be an artist in a cultural space. I was all about a movement but one that centers culture because there are so many underserved artists.

I got resources, raised money, and the CultureStrike project was born in 2011, led by me and co-founded with Jeff Chang. The rst thing we did, along with Andrew Hsiao (editor at Verso Books) and Ken Chen (former Executive Director of Asian American Writers Workshops), was to go to Arizona to connect and meet with folks. We wanted to bring a delegation of artists there and that’s what we did. We brought folks like Teju Cole, dream hampton, W. Kamau Bell, El MAC, Elizabeth Mendez Berry, Daniel Alarcón, Emory Douglas, and Maxine Hong Kingston—a bunch of dope people! Everyone came from different parts of the country and met in Arizona. It was like a $60,000 project to make this happen. We visited detention centers in Pima County in Arizona to witness Operation Streamline—a 2005 joint initiative of the US Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice that criminally prosecutes unauthorized border crossing through a “zero-tolerance” approach. From this work, CultureStrike was born, and thereafter I worked with several artivist, like Julio Salgado from the UndocuQueer Movement (see Ochoa 2015). Based on this work with CultureStrike, I was featured in a three-part documentary series that artist Pharrell Williams produced titled “Migration is Beautiful”—which is also the name of one of my most recognized prints (see Figure 14). This series was signi cant because it challenged the negative rhetoric and views about immigration and undocumented migrants in the United States and Williams released it on his “i am OTHER” YouTube channel (i am OTHER 2013). Since then, CultureStrike and the work of other organizations evolved into the Center for Cultural Power, which had a budget of ten million dollars in 2022.

In time, I realized that it was important to tell my story and how culture can help move things, why art is essential, and why we should be talking about artists. Then I started getting involved with labor, reproductive, and climate justice movements. For example, through my organization, I supported Walmart workers with their efforts to unionize and ght for fair wages in 2013, and I did a bunch of creative work with the People’s Climate March in 2014 in New York City. I feel like I have been deeply solidifying my relationship with movements and bringing culture to them. By bringing art to actions, I can help people to think about the importance of culture and to see artists. We don’t want to just have transactional relationships; we want to be part of an ecosystem that gures out how to pay artists. That’s why I started The Center for Cultural Power: to move resources to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (or BIPOC) and other marginalized artists. I know that I have my superpower through creating, and I feel like I need to inspire other artists to see their superpowers. So, in this

Figure 14. “Migration is Beautiful 2018” (2018). Offset lithography (24 × 18 inches). Image courtesy of Favianna Rodriguez.

organization, I am not focused on themes around decolonizing sex; I treat this as a separate body of work.

(XB): Perhaps in the future, all your projects will combine. It makes me think of your unapologetic “Pussy Power” digital prints (see Figures 15 and 16) and “Pussy Power Imaginary” project (see Pérez 2019) that you announced in 2015. Not only did this art and project af rm “sluttiness” and womxn’s bodies, but it also called attention to misogynist politicians who work to limit or end access to health, birth control, and abortions. These issues are pressing given that the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Roe v Wade in the summer of 2022, taking away federal protection for abortion rights. In many ways your work enacts a decolonial feminist imaginary and futurity that challenges heteropatriarchal coloniality by creating new narratives in society and moving away from survival towards cultivating horizons of desire and in which we thrive (see Pérez 1999; Gunn 2019; Mendieta 2020). Folks who are “already there” understand the interconnections, but mainstream audiences may not yet.

(FR): The Pussy Power social justice posters were part of a series of feminist reactions to the political and conservative attacks on abortions during that time. In 2011, I had a second abortion (PopSugar 2022), and I publicly spoke about it to shed away the shame and break the silence, as well as put a face to the debates and complicate the narratives around the subject. Given the overturning of Roe v. Wade, as a cultural worker I realize that there is more work to do to normalize abortions, to see it as a standard medical procedure and not weighed down by “moral” values. Political conservatives—who are majority white hetero cisgender men—control politics, and we see how they polarize critical topics, like abortions and trans rights. Many young people are identifying as non-binary and there is more trans visibility in pop culture, but mainstream politics may not re ect this. Cultural power moves on a different track than politics.

I also do my cultural movement work with my organization. I am at a point when legally, I must keep my art and organizing work separated. Before, both were more combined because they weren’t about things considered controversial like sex or “drugs.” So, my organization has been growing by focusing on topics like racial-, gender-, climate justice, or prison abolitionism. In my artistic practice, I want to be able to play and try everything. For example, I have been making earrings, growing food, starting to produce pleasure-based events, as I mentioned earlier. I have ideas that I can help to manifest, so I understand my role as a creator is also about making space for collaboration or bringing resources and abundance to projects—it’s sort of like setting up a table for things to emerge and happen. With the porn, it’s been super fascinating. From the moment we started to make the lm, the vibe of the space and the

Figure 15. “Pussy Power” (2012). Digital Print (17 × 12 inches). Image courtesy of Favianna Rodríguez.

Figure 16. “I’m a Slut” (2012). Digital Print (17 × 12 inches). Image courtesy of Favianna Rodríguez.

people we hired were all very intentional. When I took a break, the woman that I hired for sound came up to me and said, “Hey, I met you in Arizona in 2011. This is the rst porn that I have ever worked on; we love you in Arizona and the work that you do.” Then I ended up connecting her team with my organization to work on videos activating Arizona voters during this past 2020 US presidential election.

I have experienced several personal challenges before arriving at a space where I could thrive. In 2014 is when I met a person who I would romantically

Figure 17. “I Accept You” (2019). 4-color serigraph on Chip Board (14 × 12 inches). Image courtesy of Favianna Rodriguez.

be involved with for four years but, unfortunately, was abusive and violent. During this time, I took care of my father when he was diagnosed with cancer in 2015. He died the following year, which was a big turning point. In 2017, I realized that I was in an abusive cycle with my partner, and I didn’t tell anybody about it. It was so bad that I had to plan my exit for safety purposes and because I couldn’t get rid of him. He was manipulative and would say alarming things like that he was going to cut his veins, and he would pull out knives, pull his hair out, or scream at me. It got to a point where I didn’t want to come home. My career was exploding, so I hardly had to be home; I was traveling like once a week. I could be numb from productivity, and I was still healing from my dad’s death. I was nally able to execute my exit plan from the relationship in 2018, and October became very signi cant because it was when I ended a major cycle. When I looked at the history and patterns of my relationships and upbringing, I realized that I was reenacting trauma bonds. I was like, “wow!” So, in 2018 is when I began to intentionally address this issue. As I recovered from the abusive relationship, I created a serigraph that re ects my journey of self-love and acceptance (see Figure 17). Through this process, I became curious about using natural medicines or what we call “psychedelics,” so I did ayahuasca for the rst time for my healing.

What followed was another bad relationship, and I had my third abortion in October of 2019. The person who I was sleeping with at the time disappeared after I got pregnant, which is what happened the rst time I had an abortion in 2000. I realized that I was enacting womb trauma and needed deep healing around this and the relationship choices I was making that were taking a toll on my body. When my mom immigrated to the United States from Peru, she got pregnant by her partner at the time who was abusive. In time, Ricky was born in 1970 at a Catholic hospital where the staff didn’t speak Spanish. The nuns in the hospital were not going to encourage abortion, so by default they advised my mother to give up her son for adoption. I was born years later, and my mom didn’t tell me that my brother existed until Ricky found us when he was thirty-one years old (I was twenty- ve). I know my mom had womb trauma that passed on to me—but that’s not the only family trauma that continues.

On my dad’s side was my grandmother Lucia Cardenas who was AfroPeruvian. She was a live-in domestic service worker—the maid—who used to clean for a well-off white Peruvian family. Don Jorge was the patriarch, married with a family. He was married to a light-skinned Peruvian, but my grandma also birthed three of his children. I see this as a violation of my grandmother since there was an uneven hierarchical relationship in which he had more power as her boss. She didn’t have much of a choice or access to abortion, so I see her children—which includes my father—as a product of rape. Don Jorge never engaged with my grandmother’s life. She didn’t talk about it, but I know how to put two and two together. I thought, “How did my grandmother have kids with Don Jorge when he was also married, and my dad’s half-sister are from the

same generation.” Things que se permetían en Perú: silences. He never married my grandmother; she still had to live as a Black mother with kids: my dad and two twins (Jorge and Daniel who are my uncles). Gustavo is my dad, and Ricky is my older brother. Ricky is the son of one of the twins. My mom’s rst baby daddy was from one of Gustavo’s siblings. Things are so interwoven.

The white family took and spoiled my uncles, los mellizos—that’s what they call twins in Peru—because they are seen as a sign of good luck. Unfortunately, the twins started drinking heavily when they were fteen years old and were alcoholics most of their lives. After my family migrated to the United States, my grandmother lived at my parent’s home in Oakland. One of my twin uncles was frequently drunk around the Fruitvale area and often came home beaten up; he died before my grandmother did. Both of my twin uncles mirrored each other—my other uncle died of alcohol related complications. I thought, “My grandmother brought life into this world through uneven power structures and witnessed the demise of her two sons to a familial and cultural system that just made them numb.” I believe this harm that my grandmother experienced requires sooo much healing work that she could not do, and she held on to so much pain. I realized that I inherited generational womb trauma from both sides of my family. In a ceremony, I could see and feel that pain, so I knew that my next journey was to do womb healing.

This last abortion that I had in October of 2019, I decided not to do it via medical procedure but through a doula at home (PopSugar 2022). It was another experience. I thought, “Wow, even colonization has taken this form of healing from us.” We are hardly ever presented with the option to be able to heal from not allowing new life to come—sometimes it’s not the right time and we have to close that portal. Feeling this abortion deep in my body was a healing experience. The rst two abortions (one in 2000 and the other in 2011), I didn’t feel them; I was numbed out on my back in a clinic. This one in 2019 I did feel, and it was what I needed to take back my body. I consider myself an educated “woke” woman, but in my healing work, a lot of it was learning how to re-parent, reclaim, and protect my body, and not put it in dangerous situations. After the last abortion, I felt like I had matured through the process.

In 2020, when October came around, I felt good, free, and manifesting my power. Good weed was coming, my art was selling, my organization was growing. I think I am creating abundance and empowering other women to build power. Currently, I am in a phase where storytelling is very important to me. I share my stories on social media, like why I grow cannabis, what I do with it, and how it makes one feel good. I talk about other topics like masturbation to help others engage with those practices. Also, I am working on a TV show concept based on my mixed-race family, generational trauma, abortions, and how breaking cycles relate to healing the planet. I’m drafting out the seasons of the show and working on grant writing to fund the project.

Figure 18. “Release What Doesn’t Serve Me” (2019). Collage with monoprint on Cotton Rag Paper (30 × 22.5 inches). Image courtesy of Favianna Rodriguez.

(XB): The body is often central in your work (e.g., Figure 18), and art has the power to heal and transform pain (Vox Creative 2022). Furthermore, embodying artivism and joy are ways to reconcile social injustice or intervene in colonial domination (Cantrick et al 2018; Negrón-Muntander 2020). Because carrying intergenerational trauma in the body has dire consequences (van der Kolk 2014; Duran 2019), healing from oppression through decolonial practices is especially critical. For example, you mentioned that your last abortion with a doula provided a healing experience that contrasted your numbing one through Western medicine. Can you elaborate on this healing experience?

(FR): My abortion through Western medicine was a detached, sterile, and oppressive experience. A doula helps with the healing because they can provide care before, during, and after the abortion. I contacted a friend who is a doula and part of a network of birth workers and abortion providers. She said I could do the process at home with abortion pills, so she came to my house and helped to prepare me. The spiritual aspect of this abortion included talking to my womb and vulva and having a ceremony around the process. The rst night when I took the pills, the grief and pain kept me up as I thought about my grandmother, mother, and upbringing in a culture where sex or womb trauma were not talked about openly. About two days later, the embryo came out with blood and tissue. It was a very moving experience, and I had a ceremony where I buried the embryo in the backyard. I realized that I hadn’t fully grieved my rst two abortions, but the ceremonial burying of my third one allowed me to heal. This healing process is very important because I do believe we are making a choice to end life, even if it may not be fully developed, and that is our right as womb carriers. I also believe people who have abortions must have the option to grieve. If we don’t have spaces to grieve, the pain—the harsh energy—sometimes cannot move. By sharing our stories, we can heal ourselves and our communities.

Given that the right-wing has coopted the idea of life and turned it against those of us who ght for the right to an abortion, I must clarify that I do believe it is the decision of the person who is holding the life—the womb carrier—to determine if it is the appropriate time or not. It’s very important to keep abortion accessible and safe, but I also think that some critical feminist frameworks—like reproductive justice—must decolonize their views because they were developed through a lens of white supremacy. We must also embrace our ancestral ways of healing. Curanderas and parteras—or birth workers—many of whom heteropatriarchy colonialism has attempted to silence or erase, carry traditional knowledge around abortions and can serve as our guides. A lot of the ancestral ways and wisdom that doulas practice is through the passing of conocimiento or knowing. As a creator of culture, I feel that I am relearning things that our people already know, like how to grow food, care for plants, or to be in relationship to medicine. It’s like I am returning to my basic core knowledge, activating my DNA. That’s where I am currently at with my art form, really thinking about

all the ways that I can help to reshape all these concepts, while opening other minds to them.

Through rituals or ceremonies, I allow communication with my ancestors. I feel and see my people, my past, my community. I realize how our traditions are so important and contain so much wisdom. There have been culture keepers who pass down their wisdom and healing through the foods that they made. When I make curries, I am like, “How the fuck did human beings gure out how to mix these ingredients?” When I eat and taste certain ingredients, I feel communication through my mouth and taste buds, like something powerful happens. For example, I can feel ginger and turmeric open parts of my body, like my sinuses and jaw. People over time have developed a language between foods and the natural world that speak to different parts of the body. I am attuned to this alchemy and want to help other people experience this.

(XB): The recent or contemporary socio-political context involves many critical movements and issues, such as: Black Lives Matter; Land Back; #MeToo; Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls; anti-Asian racism, hate, and violence; ICE arrests, detentions, and deportations; Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions; COVID-19; and climate change. You mentioned your coalitional work and solidarity efforts with artists, activists, and artivists, as well using social media with your artivism.

(FR): Yes, social media is another tool to enact social change. Every tool has great things that it can do. I use certain skills in my art, and then I have other techniques when I cook, like following recipes. Smartphones are a medium where people interact in technology space. Through social media you can transport people somewhere, but it’s about guring out, how does one take them and to where? My targeted audience is people in the United States as well as Latin America, although not limited to these areas. In many ways, I speak about the cultures of how I was raised, which have inherited and are informed by colonial values. In general, my work is for people who experience colonization or social inequities. I have done art workshops for artists throughout the Arab region, such as Sudan, Tunisia, Lebanon, Beirut, Palestine, and Egypt. Although there are big cultural differences especially around gender and sexuality, at the core, we share the common goal of social justice. I believe that if we are going to move away from a culture of sexual violence and harassment, then we need a culture of agency, sexual liberation, and healing. So, even if people don’t agree with my work or don’t think it’s relevant to their lives, they can see the value and recognize links to their respective social contexts. My organization provides a space to collaborate with other people about critical topics and questions. My socio-political analysis is informed by several frameworks, like Black Liberation practiced by the Black Panthers or Black Lives Matters, so it’s been such a gift to apply what I have learned. How is

anti-blackness showing up in how we work? How do we call anti-Blackness into question? How do we demonstrate solidarity? In my organization, I get to do this with so many collaborators. For example, we partnered with a group of Black survivors of sexual assault to develop a storytelling projects. One of them was Rethinking Gender where various artists were commissioned to create illustrations of gender inclusivity for a children’s coloring book. With climate justice work, we are intentional about collaborating with groups who are BIPOC led. We look at Indigenous sovereignty and related issues, such as moving away from extractive practices and moving towards regenerative economies. Our gender justice work breaks binaries by including folks from all genders. Our electoral work is about activating Latinx and Black folks, guring out how to tell stories that re ect our communities and invite us to think differently about our electoral system. I feel so lucky to have created a space and be in a community where we can ask dif cult questions and gure out solutions.

For me, art is not a privilege only for the elite. Cultural expression comes in many forms, and my life’s work is about demanding that all communities have the right to access art and express themselves. My art is about creating in multiples, so there is a lot of it, and not just about one piece. I don’t make one expensive painting of which the goal is to hang in a museum. Instead, I make prints, for example, because they’re accessible and many of them. Emory Douglas, who was the minister of culture for the Black Panthers, taught me that my art did not have to exist in elite places (Vox Creative 2022). My art could live in a newspaper or poster, multiplied in many places at once, reproduced over and over. In addition, I do critical artwork in other ways. For example, the woman who produced the short porn lm that I mentioned earlier, Lotus Lain, she’s a Black woman who organizes BIPOC performers in the porn industry. I’m like, “Fuck yeah! I am all about it. Let’s do things together, let’s create together.” I get to do that in a very different space that is about the art. I feel really fortunate to use my art in so many generative ways.

But there is a lot of work to do to enact social change. There is so much activism that is being done by women of color. Right now, I feel like I am doing too much. Why do I need to be extraordinary to survive? There is something that we need to do about this—especially as women of color who have been so programmed to help—to gure out the right balance. That’s the conversation that I am having now with myself. I think that’s what the next body of work is about: healing. Then, guring out, how do I get into balance? I am active and creating more art than I ever have been. I feel like I am having great sex, I am eating well, and things are feeling really good. I want to continue to create art that helps to facilitate this for more people, especially Latinas. Xamuel, the things that Latinas tell me! I’m like, “damn, colonialism has really fucked us up.” It’s been twice, rst by the European colonizers then the United States. It’s deep and traumatizing, so there is a lot of work to do with our gente. I like the idea of in uencing culture as a form of social sculpture. In my workshops,

I talk about waves, how culture is like water that creates ripples. I believe we must be more intentional about creating ripples with momentum. If we keep making social changes that are only about the mind or body, we are limited. We must also invite a vision of the future and bear witness through art because they can facilitate healing and transformation.

(XB): Previously you mentioned attending Burning Man, which is an annual week-long event held in the Black Rock Desert in the United States that focuses on art, self-expression, community, and self-reliance. As you know, one longstanding critique of Burning Man is that it lacks racial diversity (Oniah 2021), despite one of the guiding principles of the event is “Radical Inclusion.” I know that you have worked hard to push racial inclusivity in Burning Man (see Boyer 2020), but for folks who may not be familiar with the space, could you share why it was important to do so?

(FR): I went to my rst Burning Man in 2011 when a professional associate at the time invited me to go with some activists. What I saw and experienced there blew my mind open. You are in another world—a city where anything can happen. To have a ctional space can be empowering because you can invent yourself, while you get exposed to what it is like to live freely, where you can express your desires and be in conversation with nature. White people have had the spaciousness to gure all that shit out, to create these spaces that can be very conducive to having breakthroughs. Burning Man is similar to an ayahuasca journey: it’s an experience that accelerates your transformation as you question your worldview.

I learned how to “burn” or participate in the event—such as setting up and running a camp—through my intellectual property lawyer. It was empowering because she taught me so many details, like how to create an autonomous village to protect you and others from nature’s elements and how to rely on one another for survival. It’s all about your camp, so if it is sloppy, you are not gonna have a good experience. To organize a camp means planning for food, having enough water, guring out how to power our lights—all those things. Years later she asked me to be the lead of the Que Viva camp. I noticed there were very few Black and Latinx people when I rst went, so when I became the lead, I asked key questions about racial justice, and stated that I wanted to center the leadership of BIPOC women. I felt like she took up too much space, so I called her out on it and challenged her. She exploded and I felt that she displayed white fragility and white privilege. I got into an argument but then the people of color that I brought to the camp stood with me. We wanted to take the camp in another direction, so, my relationship with my associate ended. I then created my own camp. I was like, “I am in charge; we can do this!” What I really liked about my camp is that we centered racial justice and led with pleasure activism. We were like, “cool, let’s plan out all really good meals; let’s have all these things that we

Figure 19. “Time to Rise 1” (2022). Collage with screen print, phototransfers, and linoleum block elements on Cotton Rag Paper (15 × 11.25 inches). Image courtesy of Favianna Rodriguez.

want to experiment with; let’s make sure that our whole set up looks really nice, protected, and that our shower works.” The work brought us together. We as BIPOC, especially as women who are in leadership and were helping with our movements, we needed to have a space to be wild and free, and that meant that we needed real support from the Burning Man organization. We realized that we needed to name the racial exclusion and challenge Burning Man to address the problem and makes changes. Given the context of the Black Lives Matter and Time’s Up movements, Burning Man felt the pressure and made some changes.

(XB): We have covered so much in this conversation! Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience of your decolonial feminist work. May your artivism inspire others to enact change. Any closing thoughts that you would like to share?

(FR): Your welcome; the conversation was so much fun! To conclude, I want to share a little bit about my experience participating at the 27th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, commonly referred to as COP27. The conference took place in Egypt during November 2022, and I talked about the role of culture, art, and entertainment as it relates to climate change. It was a powerful moment in my career because it was a global platform to help shape critical dialogues around urgent matters that I care about and affect a lot of our people. I was in community with this movement that includes multigenerational representatives from throughout the world. For example, there were leaders from the Amazon and the African continent. It felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity to contribute to shaping important global conversations. It was a humbling experience for me, and I felt very blessed to witness and participate.

One of the major takeaways from UCOP27 for me was the crisis of climate chaos. I have done a series of prints that focus on planet earth (see Figure 19), so this topic was especially important to me. There is an argument within climate spaces that Western imperialism, colonization, and white supremacy caused the climate crisis, and that it is not something that emerged recently but when Europeans invaded and ravaged the Americas and other places on the planet. One of the prominent discussions or demands at UCOP27 was about loss and damage, and that polluting nations and those responsible for the climate crisis should pay for reparations. For hundreds of years—especially over the last decades and years—certain powers have accelerated the exploitation of natural resources and increased greenhouse gas emissions. Corporations, like gas and oil companies, are getting richer and causing irreparable damage to the planet, humans, and ecosystems. Many countries are raising the question of who should be paying for reparations. Obviously, it would be the United States, England, and all the other colonizer nations. Demanding for reparations at a global level

was groundbreaking because it goes against government slogans of adaptation. How does one adapt to climate change? There comes a point when adapting isn’t an option because resources are so exploited with detrimental consequences.

Finally, there were also conversations at UCOP27 about how the earth exists because of the power to create life, and the problem of heteropatriarchy that empowers cisgender men to make harmful decisions about the planet. This is connected to the global sexual/gender violence crisis against womb carriers and people whose gender and sexual identities don’t t heteronormativity and cisnormativity. Indigenous women who participated at UCOP27 regularly stated: when women heal, so does the earth; when the earth heals, so do women. Guided by the principles of decolonial pleasure and joy, my artivism is deeply connected to restoring the planet and creating conditions for women and marginalized folks to heal and work towards social change.

Xamuel Bañales is an associate professor and former chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at California State University, Stanislaus. Bañales completed their doctorate degree from UC Berkeley and has authored essays in many critical anthologies and journals, including Ethnic Studies Review; Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies; Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society; The Bilingual Review/Revista Bilingüe; and North American Congress on Latin America.

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