Alexa Vasquez

Artist | Writer | Pisces

Origin

My family is from Oaxaca, one of the most southern and most ethnically diverse parts of Mexico. There are seven different regions in Oaxaca. My family lives in the central region.

My mom and dad were childhood friends. They grew up in the same pueblo and have known each other since they were seven and eight [years old].

Migration

There is a lot of romanticism about migration. The weight of the story is often [framed as] parents wanting a better future for their kids. But immigration stories are not all the same. My parents, from what I’m learning, migrated to the United States because of family issues. There was a lack of trust and love with their parents.

The first time I shared in school where my family came from I did not know how to pronounce Oaxaca. As a child learning and speaking English in school and speaking Spanglish at home, I was grasping the concept that the place where I was born is not the same as the place where I am [currently] at. I was not born here. I am not from here. This is where the feeling of displacement began for me.

Childhood

Growing up Oaxacaño is really special because my parents brought with them a lot of culture and tradition. We always practiced our culture, that was one of the beautiful things they instilled in us. My mom had an altar every day in our home with pictures of our loved ones. I experienced my parents lose their parents and the grief that comes with not being able to travel and mend those relationships.

Poverty played a big role in my upbringing. Thinking about myself wasn’t the main thing. I was concerned with How is my family doing? Is my dad worried about the rent? and Is my mom stressed?

My father is an alcoholic and I didn’t have the best relationship with him. Alcoholism seems to be an issue in our community, because of immigrants who may be overworked and leaning into alcohol as escapism. But growing up as a child, I didn’t understand that. I just wanted the love of my parents.

I always felt that my dad had perfect examples of what little boys were to him. My older brothers were very masculine and loved to do masculine things. I leaned into books, school and very feminine things. There was this tug of war relationship between us. I don’t think he ever understood that what he was doing to me was hurting me and hindering my growth. My last show Brava had a lot to do with that.

Self-Discovery

When I went to college I was able to have space from my parents. I was able to learn more about myself and my queerness. I always praise community college because Santa Ana College really did root me in my community.

I developed a lot of my politics in college. I developed friendships that changed my life and changed who I was. Friendships that revealed myself to me.

We grew up during the time when Prop 8 and marriage equality were big things on the ballot. We didn’t have social media to connect so we had to meet up in a teacher’s classroom or at a friend’s job to raise funds. We grew up with the sense that, as queer people, we are our chosen family.

My time away from my family, when I was forming my chosen queer family, was a time when my siblings were also forming their families. We grew up and we grew apart from each other. A big part of therapy for me right now is being ok with that. Just because we are blood related doesn’t mean that we have to have a deep connection.

Turning Point

In 2014 I experienced a big loss when my best friend, Zoraida Reyes, passed away. Zoraida was an immigrant activist and transgender woman from Santa Ana. I met her through the Orange County DREAM Team - a group of college students who would host meetings and fundraisers to raise money for the push of the DREAM Act.

I didn’t know what transness was before I met Zoraida. I didn’t know that you could embody your femininity in that way. Transness was introduced to me as prostitution or the punch line of jokes in Mexican films that featured straight men dressed in drag playing trans women.

When Zoraida introduced herself to me as trans I connected with a lot of what she felt when she transitioned. She became this trans sister and helped me come into my transness. We would take the bus together to South Central LA to get our hormones.

A lot of folks don’t know how new trans health care is and how women of color have been fighting to make trans health care more accessible. We would both have to take the whole day off work just to get our hormones. And we shared the clinic with meth addicts.

Her life shouldn’t have ended the way it did. A lot of trans immigrant women experience that kind of violence on a daily basis. Trans women are less expected to live past [the age of] 35 because of the violence and the transphobia out there, and the way the system treats us.

Her passing marked a big shift in my life. It was my biggest heartbreak. She was my family.

I’m a romantic who always thought I would find love one day, but after [losing her], I didn’t think it would happen. Then I met my husband while we were both playing extras on the show Glee. They put out a call for trans folks because one of their characters was coming out as trans and they wanted to form the biggest trans choir. I was taken aback by this young man who I thought was so cute. We became friends, then started a relationship, and now we’ve been married for 7 years. Suddenly, I felt like my friend was taking care of me again. She was letting me know that I wasn’t going to be alone. This person was going to come into my life and give me the same amount of love and become my family.

Her passing also brought my family closer to me because my mom, my sister and some of my siblings knew her and understood that we both have similar paths in life as trans women. They wanted to keep this from happening to more girls.

Art + Beauty + Rage

I have always created. I have always loved art. Art has always been therapeutic for me. And I have always had a big sense that I was made for this. I feel that one day my work will be archived and will hopefully create conversations about gender, migration and imagination. Those are the conversations I want to spark with my work.

I am so grateful for the women who held space for me growing up, before I came into my identity, and taught me how to create beauty. They were my art teachers. The world in a way is very cruel to people like me, but they made it so that their classrooms were safe spaces for me to create. Women especially have a way of experiencing the world in a way that is more tender, more compassionate, more beautiful. It is always easier for us to lean into the beauty of the things around us.

In 9th grade I went on a field trip to an art museum and saw a photograph that captivated me as soon as I stepped off the bus. It told me that I would have a connection to art and museums. I am also connected to artists [through my ancestry] and I have always had adults point out that I have a gift that is inherited. That keeps me motivated to keep leaning into the beauty of the world.

[Through art] I also lean into the political. As immigrants, we are not invited to the table of protesting and expressing our rage against the system that won’t see us as more than a labor force. When I create I also create with the idea that someone will understand it and it will speak to the human side of being an immigrant.

This past year, more than beauty, I focused on rage. What does rage look like through art? As a feminine person, you can’t act out, you have to be polite, you have to be a good immigrant to be good with society.

I have always had this love and attraction to beauty and not beauty. And how they can work alongside each other and they both bring out the best in each other.

As an artist, I also want to shave away at the line that art is just for white people and art owners are just white, rich men. For me it is very important to make the people around me art owners and for my art to be available in that way.

I also look at art as something that can transform me and keep on transforming me. Right now a lot of my inspiration has been Laura Aguilar. When I looked at her body of work it freed me to my own body and made me braver, not looking for inspiration outside of myself. A big conversation these days is body positivity. But how do we begin to really understand body positivity as brown women? I lean into art to really explain that for me.

Representation + Impact

I’ve learned, from the icons I lean into, that representation can be a double edged sword. Having the weight of representing can be good and bad because some folks might not understand that, at some point, everyone is flawed. That’s why I like to dig into the complexities of my story.

The best representation is making space for people. I hope that is what people take away from me. It’s not just about me getting to a certain place in my career. We need to hold space for other people. You’re there to open up the opportunity to more people like yourself. It shouldn’t be about creating idols, but about opening up spaces. I want to see more people that look like me in museums.

Togetherness

I am grateful to be included in women’s spaces. There is something really special about trans womanhood. And there is also something special about cis womanhood. For us to exist in the same space is even more special. Sometimes we should be celebrated for our differences. But sometimes we should be celebrated more for how we come together.

To learn more about Alexa and her work visit her website alexavasquez.bigcartel.com and her instagram @alexa_lapintora