Elizabeth Jiménez Montelongo, The Euphoric Dance of the Unconquered Mind

Elizabeth Jiménez Montelongo is a visual artist, poet, and facilitator. Elizabeth’s work is informed by her Indigenous ancestry, Mesoamerican philosophy, Mexika & Mixtec art, Mexican culture, Chicano history, and her experiences as a woman. Her paintings and sculptures have been exhibited across the United States and her poetry is published widely in journals and anthologies including: Nos pasamos de la raya/We Crossed the Line (2017), Azahares (2020), and Harvard’s PALABRITAS (2020). Elizabeth earned a BFA in Art (Pictorial Art) and a BA in French from San José State University. She served as 2021 Creative Ambassador of the San José Office of Cultural Affairs. She is a Board Member of Poetry Center San José and Editor of La Raíz Magazine. www.ejmontelongo.com

Noe Villa Figueroa, Forced Relationship

Noe is an artist based in Berkeley. He was born in Tlalnepantla de Baz, Mexico and raised in Atizapán de Zaragoza, Ciudad Lopez Mateos until 2007 when his parents immigrated to the United States. Noe is a painter who uses thin washes and glazes of acrylic paint to reconsider the appearance of skin in painting. In sculpture, Noe is working with fabric and metal to explore the material language of the metaphorical border-wall artwork that he researches. For Noe, the experience of neither belonging and belonging to both Mexico and the United States has manifested into a practice of storytelling – being the narrator of generational family history and cultural background that succumbs to a western context. Noe was the recipient of the 2021 Mathew M. Lyon Prize in Photography.

Tania Cañas, Machete Navigation

Tania Cañas is an artist-researcher based on unceded Kulin Territory. Her work looks at socially engaged and community-led creative practices as sites of collaboration, modalities of resistance, as well as ways to rethink processes and recast institutions. She is the artistic director at Arts Gen, a community arts and health organization, and leads the Performance and Community Engagement as well as the Social Practice courses at the Victoria College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.

Jody Haines, Machete Navigation

Jody Haines is a photo-media artist based in Melbourne, Victoria. By approaching photography as a social practice, Jody focuses on identity, representation and the Female Gaze, presenting work as temporary installations across public space. Commissioned to collaborate and create work with communities across many festivals and programs, including Women of the World 2018 for the Women Dreaming Project, Horizons Festival 2019 (Queensland) with Our people Our place, collaborating with the 32 people from the local community to create a visual and audio projection. In 2018, Jody was engaged as a mentor and lead artist on Flipping the script, creating a suite of digital works with young women from the Afro-Diaspora. Also 2018, as a mentor and video artist on Place Patterns, producing and directing eight short artist documentaries, both projects supported by Creative Victoria and Wyndham City Council. Currently, a new body of work is under construction for PHOTO 2021 and will be hosted by Footscray Community Arts Centre.

Thank you to all the contributors of Issue 5 as well as the readers and supporters of Revista N’oj.