La Cautiva — The Female Captive
Rooted in the artist's own ancestry, La Cautiva documents centuries of Indigenous enslavement across the American Southwest under Spanish, Mexican, and American rule. Through intimate portraits of descendants, documentation of living cultural traditions, and landscapes marked by this history, the project uncovers what has been written out of American narratives. Built through ongoing relationships with Indigenous communities, this work bridges past and present through photography and historical research, honoring those who endured and their descendants who remember, while making visible colonialism's lasting impacts.
La Cautiva unfolds across four chapters, each documenting different communities and periods of this overlooked history. The first chapter, The Genizaro Pueblo of Abiquiu, exhibited at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in 2022-2023, is now part of The Abiqueños and the Artist at the Tacoma Art Museum through May 2026, curated in collaboration with Dr. Patricia Marroquin Norby, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's first Indigenous curator.
During a 2025 Epicenter Frontier Fellowship, a zine exploring the San Rafael Swell—where the Old Spanish Trail captivity routes passed through Utah's landscape—was produced as part of this ongoing body of work.
As the remaining chapters come together, the complete project will be presented in book and exhibition form.
San Rafael zine here