The narrative in the work of Angélica Escoto, an artist from Tijuana, has to do with existence, origin and identity

Angélica Escoto is a multidisciplinary visual artist with over 30 years of experience, whose photos document narratives that have to do with existence, origin and identity. As a highlight, Angélica uses literature to link geology, zoology, biology and astrophysics to her photography

She was awarded the San Diego Art Prize in 2022 and selected for the International Image Festival (FINI2019); she received honorable mentions in the contemporary photography contest of Ibero-America (Spain, 2016) and the XV Biennial of Visual Arts of the Northwest (Mexico, 2016). In addition, Angélica has exhibited her work in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.

“My secret is to patiently collect the images that I encounter on each trip, the images that I pursue by returning to the same place over and over again, the images that I invent using my body and appropriating it to make a compendium of creatures in painful situations, absurd, fantastic and humorous”, said Angélica Escoto.

A year ago, Angélica Escoto carried out the project “Ninguna ballena es una isla (No whale is an island)“, an autobiographical series consisting of portraits of her and her family, which she used to represent life, origin, land and women.

Angélica Escoto presents Ellas no bailan solas (They don’t dance alone)

Now, Escoto presents the exhibition Ellas no bailan solas at the Tijuana Cultural Center (Cecut), a documentary photographic series “about the daughters of the migrants who crossed through the Zapata canyon and through ‘the board’ in the eighties. and that they stayed to live in San Diego“.

Ellas no bailan solas consists of 57 photographs that recreate and bring to life traditional festivals in Mexico and Latin America to celebrate young women turning 15 years old.

Mexican migrants in the United States use quinceañera parties to strengthen their community ties, according to Angélica Escoto, who for almost ten years photographed 15-year-old parties.

“It was my business, but that’s where I started going to parties. They contacted me and I realized that the people who requested me the most were migrants from Guerrero, Oaxaca and Michoacán,” she said. The work Ellas no bailan solas will be exhibited for six months in one of the rooms of the Tijuana Cultural Center (Cecut) and later in the Manuel Álvarez Bravo Museum in Oaxaca.

Source: EFE/angelicaescoto.org/López Dóriga/Zoom.7

Translated by Paula Villanueva