Janeth Aparicio Vázquez (b. Los Angeles, CA) is a visual artist, permaculture enthusiast, and historian as curandera of Mixtec and P'urhepecha descent.

 

My interdisciplinary work spans drawing/painting, crafts-based mixed-media, and horticulture. I use this range of materials to create tender offerings to my communities: past, present, and future. 

 

My work is motivated by my ancestors’ visually recorded histories. Indigenous scholars in pre- and post-conquest Mexico pictorially recorded histories in codices. Each surviving codex provides modern-day scholars with invaluable historical information. I honor these ancestors by continuing the tradition of visually recording histories. Through my work I explore personal, communal, and ecological histories of South Central, Los Angeles, and Mexico that reflect the intricate interconnectedness of personal narratives, cultural contexts, and the natural world, and guide to ancestral inner-knowing. With these 'medicinal' histories I seek to, in the words of Boricua poet-scholar Aurora Levins Morales, "re-establish the connections between peoples and their histories, to reveal the mechanisms of power, the steps by which their current condition of oppression was achieved... but also to reveal the multiplicity, creativity, and persistence of resistance among the oppressed."  My work’s materials, content, and methods reflect this ethos. I use blue ballpoint pen ink to honor justice-system-impacted artists who came before me and to advocate for justice reform.

 

My most recent murals are located at Ruben F. Salazar Park, painted as co-lead teaching artist for the Boyle Heights Arts Conservatory's Mural Workforce Academy (Los Angeles, CA, 2023), and at Dr. Owen Lloyd Knox Elementary School (Los Angeles, CA, 2024). I have exhibited work most recently at The Brooklyn Children's Museum (Brooklyn, BY, 2024), Room 3557 (Los Angeles, CA, 2024), Superchief Gallery (Los Angeles, CA, 2023), Tlaloc Studios (Los Angeles, CA, 2022), and the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (Santa Cruz, CA, 2022). Earned awards include a commendation from the County of Los Angeles (2024), Espolón Tequila's Modern Maverick Artist Award (National Association of Latino Arts & Culture, 2024) and the California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship Award: Emerging Artist (Los Angeles Performance Practice for LA County, 2023). I hold a BA in studio art and art history from Occidental College (Los Angeles, CA).