Waning Crescent: a meztli projects group show

On View: June 12 - July 19, 2025

Opening Reception: Thursday, June 12 | 6-8pm | RSVP Here

Waning Crescent: a meztli projects group show celebrates the journey of meztli projects in supporting Native and Indigenous artists. The exhibition features works created between 2024 and today by artists engaged in their collaborative ecosystem. These pieces signify a new phase for the artists, showcasing growth into new creative realms. For instance, River Garza and Emilia Cruz have evolved toward sculptural work, Kimberly Robertson's intricate beadwork creations into large beaded tapestries, and Kenneth Lopez's documentary photography blended into woven visions.

Meztli is the Nahuatl word for "moon." For this collective, the moon and its phases symbolize their approach to cultivating relationships with young Indigenous artists, culture bearers, and the general public. Taking time to reflect on important values such as stewardship, the meaning of reindigenizing spaces and technologies, and the deep connection between ceremony and artmaking. Their work mirrors the changing seasons and is responsive to the moment.

A waning crescent represents the small sliver of the moon visible just before it enters the New Moon phase. This exhibition symbolizes what comes next for meztli projects and highlights their partnership with Oxy Arts, which has hosted various creative efforts and exemplifies a nurturing, reciprocal relationship for Indigenous artists and institutional spaces.

Exhibiting artists: Rihanna Barrera, CJ Calica, Emilia Cruz, Joel Garcia, River Garza, Skyler Green, Kenneth Lopez, Kimberly Robertson, Aanii Tate, Alexandria Ybarra, and Isaac Michael Ybarra.

This exhibition is curated by meztli projects. This exhibition is curated by meztli projects. meztli projects is an Indigenous based arts & culture collaborative centering Indigeneity into the creative practice of Los Angeles by using arts-based strategies to support, advocate for, and organize to highlight Native and Indigenous Artists and systems-impacted youth.

Meztli Projects operates out of Apachianga (East Los Angeles) in Tovaangar (Los Angeles County), lands stewarded since time immemorial by families and villages now known as the Acjachemen, Chumash, Tataviam and Tongva Tribal Nations.

Image: Joel Garcia, menily's muse (2024)

about the artists

Rihanna Barrera

CJ Calica

Emilia Cruz

Joel stands facing the camera amongst a background of leaves.

Joel Garcia

River Garza

Skyler Green

Kenneth Lopez

Kimberly Robertson

Aanii Tate

Alexandria Ybarra

Isaac Michael Ybarra

Rihanna Marie Barrera is a Chicana mixed-media artist born and raised in Los Angeles. She is also an emerging art director and curator pursuing a degree in art at Cal State University, Los Angeles. Her creative practice incorporates both the struggles and beauty of her city, along with the street artists and family ties that make it home.

CJ Calica (she/her) is a Filipino American, multimedia artist, photographer, and organizer based in Los Angeles. Their work explores memory, family, and sustainability through mediums like photography and textiles. Rooted in their experience as a second-generation immigrant from a large family, CJ’s practice centers personal histories, intergenerational storytelling, and community-based art. Whether capturing quiet moments in someone’s home or creating collaborative installations, CJ is committed to honoring the emotional and cultural weight of everyday life.

CJ found photography through Las Fotos Project, thanks to her friend Xochitl Cruz, who told her about it and helped her get involved. That space changed everything. For the first time, she had a way to tell stories without needing the perfect words, she could show people who she was through images. Photography became a way to express what she couldn't say out loud, but a quiet form of storytelling that felt honest. She didn’t need to be loud or fashionable or fluent in art-speak. She could just see people and show them as they are.

That’s what drew her to environmental portraiture. Documenting people in their most personal spaces like bedrooms, studios, living rooms that felt like a way of honoring the same in-between she’s lived in her whole life. Her photos are about memory, identity, and the places that make us feel like ourselves, even as everything around us shifts.

Emilia Cruz is an artist, educator, and emerging curator based in Simi Valley, whose work is an ethereal celebration of the feminine and her community. Her artwork pays homage to these roots through her use of bright and vivid color palettes. Many of her paintings celebrate familiar faces and evoke a sense of being placed in otherworldly settings. She teaches art classes for youth at Plaza de la Raza’s Cultural Center of the Arts and recently curated "Home Within Yourself," a group show at Plaza de la Raza Boathouse Gallery.

Joel Garcia (Huichol) is an Indigenous artist, cultural organizer, educator, co-founder, and Director of Meztli Projects, an Indigenous-based arts & culture collaborative centering Indigeneity into the creative practice of Los Angeles. In various artistic roles, he’s worked with Indigenous communities across borders to support land, access, and self-determination issues. His art (printmaking, dye making, public programming) explores healing and reconciliation, as well as memory and place, garnering national press in publications such as the LA Times, New Yorker, and Artforum, among others, for his use of art in changing policies in support of Indigenous Peoples and issues.

He’s a current Stanton Fellow and formerly an artist-in-residence and fellow at Monument Lab ('19, and '22), and co-facilitator of the Intercultural Leadership Institute ('21-'23), which proposes to hold space for cultural production outside of white supremacist frameworks, OXY ARTS, and other acclaimed projects.

River T. Garza (Tongva, Mexican) is an Indigenous interdisciplinary visual artist from Los Angeles and a member of the Ti’at Society. His work draws on traditional Tongva aesthetics, Southern California Indigenous maritime culture, Chicano culture, Mexican art, graffiti, skateboarding, and lowrider art. Through his artistic practice, Garza often explores the intersection of Tongva and Chicano/Mexican identity, history, and culture. He is a former "Creator in Residence" at the Los Angeles Public Library and a current Meztli Projects' Cultural Worker Fellowship fellow. His work can be found in permanent and private collections.

Skyler Raine Green (Tongva, Chumash) is a visual artist born and raised in the San Fernando Valley. As a young girl, she embraced the theme of being wild and free, which is evident in her art pieces. Skyler's Tongva, Chumash, and Chicana lineages influence her approach to street culture, biker culture, and Americana aesthetics. She is currently studying at California State University, Northridge.

Kenneth Lopez (Mixteco) is a photographer and cultural worker based in Los Angeles. He serves as the Program Manager for Meztli Projects, an Indigenous-led arts collaborative working on the ancestral homelands of the Tongva, Tataviam, and Chumash Tribal Nations. Kenneth’s creative practice has contributed to documenting significant conversations surrounding monuments and civic memory in Los Angeles. His work has gained international publication and will be featured in the upcoming Monument Lab book that captures their ReGeneration initiative. His approach has enabled him to establish trust with LA’s Tribal communities and support their initiatives, such as the Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa (pronounced Tar-a-haht pah-hava) Conservancy.

Kimberly Robertson is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, a Professor of American Indian Studies, and an artist. Her scholarship and creative practices center Native feminisms, the sexual and gendered violence of settler colonialism, ceremony, storytelling, decolonization, and Indigenous futurities. Her artworks have been included in numerous community, university, public, and private galleries as well as peer-reviewed monographs and anthologies. In the spring of 2024, The Chapter House hosted Robertson’s first solo-exhibition, Diary of a Native Femme(nist). Robertson is also an active member of the Los Angeles Indian community and facilitates beading circles and art-making workshops with Tribal Nations and communities, both locally and nationally.

Aanii Tate (Diné and white, she/her) works with printmaking, digital media, and fiber arts. Her art seeks to disrupt settler colonial methods of display and is based on remembering the land and sisterhood. She grew up in Portland, Oregon, creating art with her two older sisters. Three years ago she moved to Los Angeles, and recently graduated from USC, majoring in American Studies and Ethnicity (Dornsife) and minoring in Communication Design (Roski). She is passionate about arts education, community organizing, and arts resource redistribution.

Alexandria Ybarra (Tongva, Chumash) blends traditional and contemporary techniques in her work as a ceramicist, watercolorist, and basket weaver. A member of the Tongva Basket Weaving Collective: Nohaaxre Miyii Pokuu’, Ybarra’s art honors the land, incorporates natural earth elements, and celebrates the power of Indigenous womanhood. Her work invites reflection on the intersections of culture, identity, and environmental justice, offering a pathway to healing and renewal.

Isaac Michael Ybarra (Tongva, Chumash, and Xicano) is a poet, visual artist, and storyteller based in Los Angeles County. As a steward of Indigenous cultural conservation, he utilizes film, photography, and poetry to amplify decolonial narratives and reclaim Indigenous pedagogies. Through art, Isaac seeks to challenge the dominance of the human experience and instead honors the interconnectedness of all beings. He embraces the values of Indigenous Futurism to retell the past and present, envisioning a future with his ancestral homelands guided by his community's stories, visions, and desires. He is a former a California Creative Corps Fellow and a current Liberty Hill Environmental Leadership Initiative (ELI) fellow.

Waning Crescent: a meztli projects group show

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about the artists