Cuatlacuatl’s practice is directly informed and profoundly shaped by his lived experiences as part of a community forced to self-displace since the early 90’s. His practice constantly recalls the many months his father spent living in the streets of Tijuana, attempting to cross the México/United States border. These generational traumas and the violent history in México toward Indigenous communities are constantly shaping his aesthetic oeuvre. His artistic research initially questioned the why of forced self-displace. His ongoing projects are an extension of these inquiries while holding México accountable for the injustices that continue to marginalize indigenous communities. His practice amplifies a more extensive understanding of these communities’ histories, migratory experiences, and current diasporic indigeneity from Cholula, México. Migrant Nahua futurisms is the conceptual framework for an ongoing series of experimental videos and multimedia installations highlighting the community’s forced self-displacement and problematizing indigeneity in diaspora. Allegorically referencing the traditional practices of his community amplifies Indigenous immigrant realities and simultaneously challenges a history of painful fractures, distortions, and constant re-interpretations in the last 500+ years. For an undocumented immigrant, the concept of home is uncertain, thus generating a constant inquiry into what home is and how one reconstructs this intangible concept. Cuatlacuatl’s work explores existing in two places and dimensions of time as an immigrant’s ability to embody a transborder life, navigating the past, present, and future simultaneously. For Cuatlacuatl, belonging is a transcendental reclamation of time and space to reclaim a new dimension of territory or place that must exist between two worlds, between the past and the future, between two identities, between one and many selves. For Cuatlacuatl, smuggling Nahua traditions is an act of resiliency, self-preservation, resistance, and self-rematriation: to be an alien, to be the other, to be the threat, to be the dream, to be the backbone, to be the invasion, to be a cultural nomad, to be in/visible, to be 500+ years of historical weight, to be a ‘pinche indio, and to embody hope. Artist Biography Federico Cuatlacuatl (b.1991, San Francisco Coapan, Cholula, Puebla -México). Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Virginia. Cuatlacuatl’s aesthetic oeuvre addresses Nahua Indigenous immigration, social art practice, and cultural sustainability. Building on his own experience as an undocumented immigrant and DACA holder, his creative practice collides Indigeneity and immigration. At the core of his most recent research and artistic production is the intersection of transborder Indigeneity, migrant Indigenous diasporas, and Nahua futurisms. His work has been featured in international film festivals and exhibitions globally. Cuatlacuatl is a co-founder of the UNDOC+Collective and the founder of the Rasquache Artist Residency in Puebla, México. Federico Cuatlacuatl is a recipient of The Sculpture Center’s Revealed Emerging Artist Series.