Artists + Practitioners + Organizations

Meet the artists, practitioners, and organizations! Far South/Border North awarded funding to support artists and cultural practitioners working in disciplines from performing arts, visual arts, music, film and media, and literature to multidisciplinary and socially engaged forms.

Far South/Border North Round I Grant Recipients

Our Round I grant recipients include about 60 artists and cultural practitioners from San Diego and Imperial counties. Round I grant recipients began developing their campaigns in June 2023, and are now implemented those campaigns through May 2024.

Johnny Bear Contreras

San Diego County

"From the ocean to the desert and everything in between" is how Johnny Bear Contreras answers the question of what influences his work. He works in the medium of sculpture, specializing in bronze, aluminum, and stainless steel and combining all three with resin. A critical component in his work is the representation of indigenous peoples within the arts industry, sharing that "our work is our belief system on display for the whole world to see."

Carlos Uribe

Imperial County

Carlos Antonio Uribe is a 4th generation mariachi musician and director of Mariachi Acero Del Valle. He was born in Portland, Oregon, with roots in Guadalajara, Jalisco. He lives and works in Niland, California. He has performed with Mariachi Los Toros, Mariachi Espectacular, the 2022 Summit of the Americas, and Mariachi Acero.

Omar Lopex

San Diego County

Omar Lopex is a writer, director, artist, and academic whose work has screened at Big Muddy, San Diego Underground, Harkat 16mm Film festivals, Mingei International Museum, San Diego Museum of Art, La Jolla Athenaeum, and the Hyperreal Vegas Residency. He's a grant recipient from American Artists, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Avery-Tsui Foundation, and the William Male Foundation. Lopex shoots exclusively on celluloid film and won the Binational Filmmaker Award for his debut feature Ana, Who They Pulled Out of the River from Film Consortium San Diego 2018. In 2022, in collaboration with FotoKem and Kodak Film, Lopex established the inaugural Standard Fantastic Transborder Film Fellowship, providing materials, equipment, and mentorship for two teams of young filmmakers to produce narrative films within the US/Mexico Transborder region. Lopex serves on the Advisory Council for the Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts at the University of California San Diego.

Thelma de Castro

San Diego County

Filipinx playwright Thelma Virata de Castro lives in San Diego, and her writing explores identity and belonging. She's a Hedgebrook alumna and a commissioned artist with The Old Globe Theatre. With Asian Story Theater, she won The San Diego Foundation's Creative Catalyst Fellowship and collaborated on multiple California Humanities projects. Access Inc. awarded her the Esperanza Award for extraordinary commitment to eradicating domestic violence in San Diego County. Playwrights Project produced The TAG Project with support from the William Male Foundation. She founded San Diego Playwrights, serves the Dramatists Guild on the Regional Affairs Committee, and builds community with United AAPI Artists. She chairs the DEI committee and sits on the Board of Directors for San Diego Writers, Ink. She works as a teaching artist and dramaturge. The San Diego Union-Tribune included her in its list of Phenomenal San Diego Women: Creators and Performers.

Zaquia Mahler Salinas

San Diego County

Zaquia Mahler Salinas is a dance artist invested in movement-art as an act of reclamation and world-building. She has worked with many organizations in San Diego in various artistic, administrative, and teaching capacities. Zaquia has had the opportunity to engage dance communities worldwide, including a 2019 residency in Bethlehem, Palestine, focusing on dance as a form of cultural, embodied resistance. In 2018, she founded DISCO RIOT, a nonprofit movement-arts organization that supports local dance and provides creative possibilities for advancing the scene in San Diego. Zaquia is a lifelong learner and holds a bachelor's in Dance with honors from the University of California Santa Barbara (2011), a Master's in Dance: Creative Practice with honors from Saint Mary's College of California (2017), a certificate in Nonprofit Management from the University of San Diego (2021), and a California Single Subject Teaching Credential for Dance (2022).

Angelica "Babay L. Angles" Tolentino

San Diego County

Babay L. Angles, aka Bomba Brown (Angelica Janabajal Tolentino), is a Pilipinx interdisciplinary performance artist, DJ, joy and rest practitioner, educator, and community organizer from San Diego, CA (Kumeyaay Territory), Okinawa, Japan, and Olongapo, Philippines. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Ethnic Studies from the University of California San Diego and a Master of Arts in Urban Education and Social Justice with a Single Subject Teaching Credential in Social Studies. She practices deep listening and channels movements to express the inherited resilience of the Pilipinx psyche and is moved by funk, bass, percussion, environmental sound, breath, and land memory. Angles blends decolonial hxstorical research, ethnography, trauma-informed facilitation, movement, installation, adornment, sound, and ritual to heal and get FREE. Weaving connections between the strength of Pilipinx of the diaspora, BIPOC, womxn, LGBTQI+ communities, and those at the margins. She builds community through the shared creation of holistic artistic resistance and wellness.

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Far South/Border North Round II Grant Recipients

Our Round II grant recipients include 18 San Diego and Imperial County organizations. In fall 2023, they hired artists and cultural practitioners and began working alongside them to develop their campaigns, and implemented them through August 2024.

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