Campus Directory

Division Arts Division

Department/College/Unit Art Department

Title Graduate Student

Graduate Major Environmental Art + Social Practice

Affiliation Graduate

Mail Stop Art Department

Biography, Education and Training

Alberto Miguel Vazquez is a multidisciplinary Chicano artist in his second year of the UC Santa Cruz Environmental Art + Social Practice MFA program. His work explores environmental consciousness, and inter/trans-communality through folk performance, muralism, sculpture, and social practice. Based in Central California, Alberto earned his BA in Visual and Public Art at CSU Monterey Bay and continues to build bridges between the Monterey Peninsula, Central Valley, and Central Coast, translating ideas and critical forms of resistance into resilient networks of solidarity and mutual aid.

His research at UC Santa Cruz delves into the dialectics of inter/trans-communality, asking what collaborations, alliances, and solidarities are possible between human, non-human, and more-than-human entities even when separated by various limitations and borders. He seeks out treaties, alliances, protocols, semiotics, and poiesis to navigate social, political, and biological landscapes. Alberto’s focus on folk performance stems from its collaborative nature and its roots in the working-class culture from which he and his family come.

Moving into Fall, he is settling between desire and displacement to explore his Chicano identity with all its cultural inheritance, the Mexican-American border as a material limitation to socio-political economy and liberation, and memory as it relates to land, earth, and community. These inquiries will materialize through performances, essays, murals, songs, social gatherings, shared meals, gardens, and walks.

Teaching Interests

Chicano/a/x/e Studies

Environmental Art