About
Tesora Garcia (she/her) is a Salvadoran-American media artist, writer, and educator whose work is here to dismantle the violence of the Global North. A citizen of the Global South and an American Dreamer, Tesora’s research--drawing from various threads in immigration politics, philosophies of madness, and nonwestern esoteric spirituality--aims to explore how structural violence shapes personal and collective experience. A co-founder of Becoming Sticky, a lens-based collective of Central American photographers in the diaspora, Tesora uses a mixed-media approach that combines creative writing, critical theory, and experimental photography to unsettle fixed systems of value and artistic inquiry. Tesora’s work, through novel approaches like insect reiki and games in collective consciousness, is dedicated to the emancipation of bodies, thought, and land.
Tesora holds an MFA degree in Photography & Extended Media from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), dual degrees in Photography and Art History from the University of North Texas, and currently serves as Associate Professor of Photography and Digital Futures at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA, where she is teaching the next generation of experimental media artists and thinkers.
CV
EDUCATION
2025 Certificate in Transdisciplinary Studies, The New Centre for Research and Practice.
2016 MFA, Photography and Media, California Institute of the Arts; Valencia, California.
2014 BFA, Photography, University of North Texas; Denton, Texas (Summa Cum Laude).
2014 BA, Art History, University of North Texas; Denton, Texas (Summa Cum Laude).
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS, PERFORMANCES, SCREENINGS
2027 at the delicate waist of the americas; National Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico. (forthcoming)
2026 Becoming Sticky; GIZMO, Albuquerque, New Mexico. (forthcoming)
2026 Strategies of Resistance: Immigrant Legacies Beyond Assimilation; Heaven Gallery, Chicago, Illinois.
2026 Americanable; Kiddie Pool, Albany, New York.
2026 Media Swamp: New Media in the South; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Greenville, South Carolina.
2026 The Roach and the Amaranth; Center for Performance Research & Visual AIDS, New York, New York.
2026 Mud + Corn + Stone + Blue; curated by Laura Augusta, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, Texas.
2026 Mud + Corn + Stone + Blue; curated by Laura Augusta, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, Texas.
2026 New Spiritualities: Film as Ritual; Institute of Contemporary Art, Richmond, Virginia. (screening)
2026 slow burn; curated by Lorena Molina, Fine Arts Gallery, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California.
2025 Chateau IV; The Aldridge House, Dallas, Texas.
2025 Mud + Corn + Stone + Blue; curated by Laura Augusta, College of Wooster Art Museum, Wooster, Ohio.
2025 Meditation for Galactic Contact; Materials for the Arts (MFTA), New York, New York. (performance)
2025 Becoming Sticky: Equatorial Visions from Central America; Art League Houston, Houston, Texas.
2024 Mud + Corn + Stone + Blue; curated by Laura Augusta, Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, El Paso, Texas.
2023 Legible / Illegible; PS122 Gallery, New York, New York.
2019 Touching History: Stonewall 50; curated by David Evans Frantz, Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, California.
2019 Altered After; curated by Conrad Ventur for Visual AIDS, PARTICIPANT INC, New York, New York.
2019 Next Exit; EX OVO Gallery, Dallas, Texas.
2019 Looms; Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, Dallas, Texas.
2019 Bethesda Brotherhood; solo exhibition, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, Texas.
2016 In Sickness; two-person show curated by Benjamin Terry, Texas Woman's University, Denton, Texas.
2016 Transmission Reentry; curated by Giovanni Valderas, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas.
2016 Cut-Ups: Queer Collage Practices; curated by David Evans Frantz, Lucas Hilderbrand, and Kayleigh Perkov, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York, New York.
2016 Cock, Paper, Scissors; curated by David Evans Frantz, Lucas Hilderbrand, and Kayleigh Perkov, ONE Gallery, West Hollywood, California.
RESIDENCIES
2025 Mother's Memories Residency; Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, El Paso, Texas.
AWARDS AND HONORS
2026 Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Fund; VCU Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation, Richmond, Virginia.
2025 Emergency Grant; Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York, New York.
2024 Dean's Summer Grant; VCU School of the Arts, Richmond, Virginia.
2022 Dean's Summer Grant; VCU School of the Arts, Richmond, Virginia.
2021 Dean's Research Grant; VCU School of the Arts, Richmond, Virginia.
2020 Dean's Exploratory Grant; VCU School of the Arts, Richmond, Virginia.
2019 Dean's Exploratory Grant; VCU School of the Arts, Richmond, Virginia.
2018 Artist Microgrant; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas.
2017 Art Tooth: Mind-the-Gap Development Grant; Fort Worth, Texas.
2016 CalArts Scholarship and Grant; California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California.
2014 Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Arts Award; Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, Lansdowne, Virginia.
2014 Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Fund Award; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas.
SELECTED TALKS
2026 Black Wombs and Brown Babies: Knives Against Lives; El Salvador 1932: From Colonialism to CECOT, Graduate Center CUNY, New York, New York.
2026 Swamp Eschatology: Transgender Transcendence at the End of a World; Q Symposium, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia.
2026 Panel Discussion, Mud + Corn + Stone + Blue; Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, Texas.
2025 GRIEF: How We Sink, Mourning and Recovery in Photography; Society for Photographic Education National Conference, Reno, Nevada.
2024 UFO Studies in the Realm of Indigenous Aesthetics; Humanities Research Week, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia.
2024 Concrete: A Horror Story (essay and talk); Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, Dallas, Texas.
2024 Becoming Sticky: Central American Imagemakers and Equatorial Vision; SPE National Conference, St. Louis, Missouri.
2023 Horror, Erotica and Death at the UDC, panel with Cara Benedetto; ICA VCU, Richmond, Virginia.
2023 What's It Like? To Be a Uterus? Notes on Terramancy; SPE Regional Conference, Columbus, Georgia.
2023 Legible / Illegible Panel Discussion; PS122 Gallery, New York, New York.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY & PRESS
2026 Erik Barrios-Recendez, "slow burn, SFSU: Who's There? Invisibility Equals Violence", Roborant Review.
2026 Max Blue, "Five Spring Art Shows That Prove SF Art Scene's Endurance", San Francisco Examiner.
2026 Letha Ch'ien, "At SF State, Slow Gestures Accumulate Into Acts of Resistance", KQED.
2025 Glasstire, "Top Five: February 2025", #1 Becoming Sticky, Glasstire.
2024 Glasstire, "Top Five: December 2024", #1 Mud + Corn + Stone + Blue, Glasstire.
2024 Brook Vann, J Molina Garcia (Tesora), and August Black, "Pulse Memorial: A Web Broadcast Multichannel Sound Installation Exploring Queer Grief Through Audience Participation", SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 Art Papers, Tokyo, Japan. ACM.
2023 J. Molina-Garcia, "Love Spirals," Future/Present: Culture in a Changing America, Duke University Press.
2020 Sarah Bochicchio, "How These Artists Reimagine the Immigration Process", Art & Object.
2020 Natalie Gempel, ["Should the Omni Dallas Put 'Black Lives Matter' on Its