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Alberto Miguel

Alberto Miguel is a Chicano folk performance artist and MFA student at UC Santa Cruz. Born in Twentynine Palms, CA, to first-generation Mexican-American military parents, he earned his BA in Visual and Public Art from CSU Monterey Bay in 2020. During the pandemic, he relocated to Fresno to collaborate with community through muralism, dance, music, performance, gardening, and meal sharing in lobbies, street corners, underground gardens, and homes. Returning to the Monterey Bay Peninsula, he continues fostering networks of solidarity, exploring how art, activism, and land-based traditions create collaborative spaces for learning, remembering, and healing.

With Danza de Paletero, I repurpose existing public venues for site-responsive multimedia performances centered around a mobile mural of Tlaloc, the Mexica rain deity, imaginado como un paletero, engulfed in flames, transforming into steam. Through performance and muralism I engage with the stories of migrant street vendors, community defenders, and freedom fighters, addressing racialized violence under capitalist frameworks. Drawing inspiration from the Victorville Eight, I investigate methods of preserving food sovereignty amidst oppression, ways communities support defenders, and nuances of militant activism. My work seeks to illuminate the connections between local resistance and larger ongoing struggles for autonomy and liberation.