Javier Stell-Fresquéz | 2022 Native Launchpad Artist

ARTIST WEBSITE

Tribal Affiliation: Piru & Tigua Pueblo ancestry; mixed Chican@

Artistic Discipline: Multidisciplinary — dance, performance art, festival production

Hometown: Oakland, CA

Javier Stell-Frésquez (she/he pronouns) serves Indigenous communities of the San Francisco Bay. Many years volunteering on the BAAITS Two-Spirits Powwow Committee have lead to her producing Weaving Spirits Festival of Two-Spirit Performance. She has life-long performance experience spread across myriad forms, including: Indigenous contemporary, vogue, flamenco, and performance art.

He has a BS in Environmental Studies with Honors in Chican@ Studies from Stanford University. Recent multimedia performance work includes Mother the Verb, and Chaac & Yum, a short art film currently showing in film festivals internationally (the culmination of a dance project by the same name.)

With a 32-year lifetime of dance and performance experience, and more than a decade of arts production work, Javier creates spaces of critical dialogue, and creative introspection. Guided by an ecological paradigm throughout her work, Javier weaves her artistic voice/practice together with her event production —work focused in Indigenous and LGBTQ2S+ cultural events.

A student of many decolonial artivists and thinkers, Javier’s work refuses colonial erasure by critically engaging social issues.