Jackie Amézquita’s Elemental Spirits

On a sunny afternoon in late January, artist Jackie Amézquita reaches into one of the many storage containers nestled in her airy studio in South Central Los Angeles. She plucks out several ears of desiccated corn. Slathered with copper paint and arranged into a neat row, the corn is roughly two years old. Amézquita rubs her hands over the dried kernels, which have begun to discolour, and says to herself: ‘This is nice. They’re oxidizing.’

Corn is one of many organic materials Amézquita uses in her paintings and performance art. In her work, dirt, cochineal and masa aren’t just potential media, they are living archives containing memories and lineages of human existence. As such, the passage of time, and the inevitable decay it brings, is at the core of her artistic process. For Amézquita, the decomposing corn in her studio hasn’t died – it is being transformed.

This same regenerative spirit animates Amézquita’s ambitious new work created at Frieze Los Angeles 2025, presented in partnership with Maestro Dobel Tequila and Art Production Fund. The piece is part of Frieze Projects, curated by Art Production Fund under the title ‘Inside Out’, which sees various artists riff on the intersection between personal histories and Los Angeles’s environs.

Situated on three outdoor soccer fields, Amézquita’s installation ruminates on her origins as a Guatemalan immigrant to Southern California, as well as the ways in which humans migrate to new landscapes, in turn adding new layers of meaning to environments already replete with stories. The new work is rooted in her fascination with data patterns, specifically those tracing global human migration throughout history. Through these studies, she learned that migration from Asia to the Americas in centuries past was not linear but rather followed a curve. Stretching 190 by 80 feet, Amézquita’s immersive installation is designed so that audiences mirror this pattern. By entering at the eastern side of the soccer fields, then wending their way on a curved trajectory, participants activate the space in an act that the artist describes as forming ‘invisible lines of connections’.

The materials Amézquita utilises in the piece – including many pounds of lava rock sourced from Mammoth Lakes near Yosemite National Park, Mexican corn, Indonesian blue pea flower, and soil and ocean water from Los Angeles – also nod to past lineages. Ancient civilisations including the Maya – an important source of inspiration for Amézquita – incorporated lava rock matter into their grand central plazas, which served as focal gathering places for their communities.

Amézquita’s emphasis on the values embedded in specific materials appealed to Maestro Dobel Tequila. Alejandra Martinez, creative director of the Maestro Dobel Artpothecary – which celebrates Mexico’s contemporary art and hospitality scene through a series of immersive events–comments how the artist ‘beautifully captures the essence of origins, generational knowledge and history, blending endemic textures and natural colours with such grace that her message feels both subtle and powerful’. Dobel’s advocacy of contemporary art has seen it support commissions at Frieze fairs by Latinx artists including Ryan Flores, Ruben Ochoa and ektor garcia, and establish the Maestro Dobel Tequila Latinx Art Prize at El Museo del Barrio in New York, the first edition of which was won by Havana-born artist Carlos Martiel. Proudly describing itself as the product of 11 generations of tequila-making, its engagement with art seeks to ‘draw from the past to create something innovative’, says Martinez.

As participants move through Amézquita’s ephemeral space, they can also sit on an array of petate, woven mats used in Indigenous ceremonies and celebrations, and gather amid copper-infused corn, cochineal and a scattering of blue pea flowers. ‘This environment will be holding space for people to interact,’ she says. ‘To move around, but also to weave themselves between each other and the landscape. Just how we have done around the world.’ As the recent wildfires have left many Angelenos temporarily homeless, this gesture acquires a new significance.

By design, the Frieze installation is exposed to the elements. Rain is a possibility, and the corn will likely decay over its four days outside. Amézquita recognises that part of being an artist involves working with environments, not against them. Her solution: some of these materials are flecked with chia seeds, which might sprout in the event of a downpour. This possibility for change is the only constant in Amézquita’s varied practice. ‘It also speaks to the reality of being humans,’ she says. ’How we transform, how we change, how we grow or regenerate.’

This article first appeared in Frieze Week Los Angeles magazine under the title ‘Elemental Spirits’.

Further Information

Frieze Los Angeles, 20 – 23 February 2025, Santa Monica Airport.

Frieze is proud to support the LA Arts Community Fire Fund, led by the J. Paul Getty Trust. In addition to Frieze’s contribution, 10% of the value of all newly purchased tickets is being donated to the fund. 

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Frieze Los Angeles is supported by global lead partner Deutsche Bank, continuing its legacy of celebrating artistic excellence on an international scale.

^{Main image: Jackie Amézquita. Photography: Ian Byers-Gamber}