ARTIST BIO

hazel batrezchavez (b.1994) on Stolen Land of Shawnee Tribe- Shelby, OH is an artist, poet, and organizer. batrezchavez received their Bachelor of Arts Degree in Studio Art and Anthropology from Grinnell College in 2017 and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico in Sculpture in 2020. Since then they have been a part of various group exhibitions and pop-up shows in the United States, specifically in California, New Mexico, Iowa, Michigan, and most recently México City, and Michoacán, México. batrezchavez is a recipient of the Anything Art Grant from Specto Art Space, Exceptional Visual Arts Scholar from Sanitary Tortilla Factory in Albuquerque, NM, and the 2019 StoryMaps Fellowship at the Santa Fe Art Institute. Currently, they reside on the unseeded territory of Tewa and Pueblo Peoples also known as Albuquerque, NM where they are working with Szu Han Ho, Bernadine Hernandez, and Martín Wannam in the Fronteristxs Collective to end migrant detention.

ARTIST STATEMENT

As an artist, activist, poet, and organizer my praxis revolves around creating spaces of agency by centering anti-colonial gestures, inverting practices of authority, and critiquing violence related to skin color, and language. Often my work bears witness to my family’s generational experiences of migration, isolation, and resistance from México and El Salvador to the United States; moving freely between performance, poetry, large-scale sculpture, sound-video installation, and textiles.

SUMMARY PROPOSAL

My proposal for this grant is to take my paleta cart, La Luchadora, to rural farmland migrant communities in southern New Mexico, to distribute hand sanitizer, masks, and Know Your Rights information printed on napkins. The goal of this project is to redistribute power through knowledge building and create spaces of agency for immigrant communities.

Learn more about hazel batrezchavez here.