Ni Santas at L.A. Freewaves' Love &/Or Hate, A Celebration of Genders. Hollywood, CA. September 7, 2019. Ni Santas chanting, "Ni Santas, Ni Putas, Solo Mujeres."

Ni Santas x Ni Putas x Solo Muxeres

A performance by Ni Santas

as part of the virtual exhibition

 Body Memory - Body Vision: Performance Works

In the summer of 2016, Andi Xoch and a friend (who wishes to remain unnamed) began to make art together and noticed that the women in their community had little access to art resources. Xoch, who was an art instructor at Self Help Graphics and had recently left the all-female bicycle brigade known as the Ovarian Psycos Cycles, wanted to create another collective that would retain the sisterhood of ex-Ovarian Psyco members. The one-time friends then decided to do a call out on social media and invite women to create art together. Self Help Graphics became the perfect place to meet.

With a shared attraction to graffiti, painting, and other similar art styles, soon thereafter, many women joined the group. At one point Ni Santas consisted of about thirteen members. As time passed by the collective grew smaller due to a difference in interests, time schedules, and life. The current collective is composed of: Andi Xoch, Joan Zeta, also a former Ovarian Psyco member, and The Clover Signs, who had also joined OPC bicycle rides.

While the majority of Ni Santa’s work is rooted in aerosol art, serigraphs, and community altars, every member contributes to incorporate a myriad of art mediums through different skills and style. The goal of the collective is be open to any muxer and manifest the power of muxeres with all artistic backgrounds to learn from each other.

Ni Santas is an all women of color collective whose mission is to write their history through art, with responsibility to create socially conscious visual narratives. Ni Santas envision creating a safe space by cultivating a community of women, free of judgment to nourish their emerging artists.

“When you’re brown a women from the hood, whether you’re queer or gender non-conforming, your oppression isn’t only experienced as a women, it is any and all those things at the same time so you have to create spaces to be able to articulate those experiences.
Historically we’ve been erased from art, and we have a responsibility to re write herstory through art creating socially conscious narratives. It empowers us to support each other because we have that trust and healing space among each other. We only get stronger by coming together.”

Ni Santas x Ni Putas x Solo Muxeres