Altar is based on part of my own altar at home and is representative of one aspect of Xicana-Indigenous ways of spiritual healing. Acrylic, oil pastel, and found materials on canvas.

I am a Xicana- Filipina American interdisciplinary artist from the Harbor Area of Los Angeles who works in fibers sculpture, installation, painting, and sign making. Gloria’s use of everyday objects blended with traditional materials and techniques invokes the art concept of ‘Rasquache,’ or ‘Rasquachismo,’ which signify a resourceful, working class, survivalist sensibility to create art. It is making the most out of the least with the inclusion of found and recycled elements. Many of her recent works merge sculpture, painting, and weaving to transpose symbols she learned growing up within a hybrid, culturally blended environment. Her intentions come from a place of decolonization, anti-capitalism, as well as transcending the effects of intergenerational trauma and marginalization. In recent years, Gloria has incorporated hair within her installation works due to a belief in its capacity to harness memories and personal power. It is a symbol and literal extension of our spiritual essence that represents strength and resilience when gathered and manipulated into a type of braid or cordage to merge with other materials. Her work with fibers is representative of the many interconnecting and intersectional layers that manifest in our emotional and physical existence as a woman of color in America. They are composed in a way that has a flow of movement through warm - cool contrast that is extracted from rhythms in the natural and urban space. Working with old family photos and stories from her youth and parent’s youth/ young adulthood is also prominent in a lot of Gloria’s newer work. She invokes and translates them into works as an informal collaboration with her Filipina migrant Mother and posthumous collaboration with her father who was a photographer for many years. It serves a way to honor oral traditions and preserve family histories. In 2014, I lost my dad to non-Hodgkins lymphoma and a lot of my works from then on have stemmed from learning to process grief and loss. My large scale tapestry weavings are inspired by the life cycles and seasonal changes that are apparent in life and nature respectively. My process based production takes in the concepts of destruction, deconstruction, and reconstruction, mimicking what we see happen naturally in all environments where flora, fauna, and homo sapiens exist. Coming to terms with these truths makes life more bearable in the sense of practicing acceptance and understanding that change is the only constant. Sanchez received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting from California State University Long Beach in 2014. She works, teaches, and resides in the harbor area of Los Angeles, CA.

IG: @glorie_elisa_mague