Life & Work with Gabriel Gutierrez

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gabriel Gutierrez.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
When I broke my hand in the basement of my Chicago foster home at the age of three, little did I know it would serve as a bridge to breaking and street dance culture 14 years later in Los Angeles. Growing up without a conventional family unit, my lessons in manhood, family, ancestral identity, and values came from the arts I consumed: primarily rap music, cartoons, and movies that modeled embracing cultural assets as resilience. The culture of street dance however, provided the most inspiring framework bounded by cultural ways of knowing to preserve, uplift, and delve deeper into my local and ancestral P’urhépecha knowledge.

Since 2013, I have focused on a simple mission: building a collective movement toward unfiltering foster and adoptee youth perspectives through performing arts. Experiencing foster care first-hand taught me advocating for myself and other foster youth was a high-stakes environment with adverse impacts. Becoming a performing artist, mentor, and peer to other foster youth artists, who also have so much to offer, has only reinforced my current understanding that I am pioneering models of care in the artistic journey of foster youth that centers self-advocacy and agency.

My contributions at the intersection of street dance, education, healing practices, and foster care advocacy have earned me invitations to train at intensives hosted by Rennie Harris, nomination for the ACTIVATE Arts Advocacy Fellowship to represent Los Angeles City District 1, and recruitment to pilot reentry programming funded by the California Arts Council.

Currently, my work continues through MoFundamentals, an adoptee-led arts program focused on transforming the trauma of the foster care system into a celebration of resiliency. During the pandemic MoFundamentals crowd-fundraised and curated the RESILIENCE film – a hybrid documentary visibilizing the unfiltered perspectives and artistry of seven former foster youth artists while paying them at a rate of $100 per hour. In the near future, MoFundamentals will host the first all-former foster youth dance festival in Los Angeles with the hopes of also founding the first all-former foster youth dance collective. You can keep up to date with this healing and transformative work at: https://linktr.ee/mofundamentals.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Developing my artistic career primarily in the social welfare sector I’ve created performing arts access for foster youth with intention, care, and most importantly crowd-fundraising to address where non-profit-foster-youth-serving-organizations fell short. In my experiences I’ve overcome barriers of red tape when recording youth (guided as protecting their vulnerable situations), agencies creating narrative erasure and filtering foster youth perspectives to meet internal grant or program goals, and county or government entities not allowing foster youth over 18 to sign consent forms for dance film projects, and strict guidelines for funding to pilot performing arts programs within an agency (which typically fall under fiscal budgets in an already under-funded extracurricular line item).

Due to consistent obstacles in the social welfare sector, in the last three years, I’ve pivoted to offer programming primarily in the arts sector mainly using my artistry as an intimate access point to the foster care experience for arts audience members in Los Angeles. Becoming a Cultural Policy Fellow to represent LA City Council District 1 only furthered my visibility and allowed me to plant seeds of the coming change I am aiming for in the arts landscape to members of the LA County Arts Commission, Arts for LA, and LA County Workforce departments.

Prior to the pandemic, I’ve visibilized the needs of foster youth while balancing bouts of houselessness, building a financial safety net, and being offered positions to create pilot programs without a foster youth team (essentially being recruited for appearance instead of impact). Seeing solutions created for not with foster youth throughout this pandemic has only reinforced my commitment and motivation to shift the public consciousness to one that sees supporting and hiring foster youth as a non-negotiable practice in programs that aim to support our needs.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am a first-generation street dance artist, former foster youth, adult adoptee, founder of MoFundamentals, and artivist dedicated to highlighting the resiliency of the foster and adoptee community. When I began to carve my artistic career path I was often told I’m fighting an uphill battle that would likely not lead to change. With every no I received, I decided to double down on the belief that I could create generational change for other foster and adoptee artists within my lifetime. Little did I know my artistry would be the vehicle for gaining a community of supporters and the fiscal support for my many projects.

I’m most proud of the decentralization of my adoptee-led art program, MoFundamentals. Since 2013, I’ve received a lot of input from community members trying to fit my offerings into a performing arts nonprofit or social welfare structure. Instead, my internal structure rotates and morphs in conjunction with the real-time needs of the current foster youth populations I serve. This malleability has led to further collaborations, curations, and innovation with MoFundamentals that would otherwise not be possible in the nonprofit or social welfare structure. My artistry has consisted of beat making, photography, dance theater, dance teaching, dance performing, and curating dance films that truly celebrate the nuances of other foster youth for nearly a decade. My foster care journey and the data I’ve collected across the years reaffirm the need to continue presenting new models and solutions led by former foster youth including myself.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
My first street dance mentor Harry Weston was pivotal in teaching me the values associated with the underground/ street dance scene in Los Angeles including: being respectful as a guest to the culture, uplifting and celebrating the pioneers who came before us, and maintaining integrity in presenting the culture in its truest form.

At UCLA, my world nearly collapsed and rebuilt imagining all the possibilities that exist with street dance when I met street dance legend and pioneer Rennie Harris. Watching his work, attending his intensives, and taking undergraduate dance classes kept me filled with inspiration and gratitude for the life-long implications of being involved in such a rich and giving culture. A lot of the leaps I’ve taken in my career are due to conversations, texts, and many of his sermons in dance classes to create balance in this world.

The current support system I’d also like to thank are: Patricia “Patty” Huerta – my partner who has continued to guide and believe in my work as an artist, Oscar Magallanes “NiMexica” – amazing Chicano muralist and creator of the MoFundamentals logo, Leo Rivas – an amazing videographer and collaborator for MoFundamentals work, and Tim Tobin “FlowNMotion” – hip hop/ rap artist and collaborator for the RESILIENCE film soundtrack. I’d also like to thank the MoFundamentals community for continuing to believe, share, and support my work. None of this is possible without the unfiltered perspectives of other former and current foster youth as well who have the greatest faith in me doing justice when sharing their stories.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/mofundamentals
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mofundamentals/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mofundamentals
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC61cYyUqUUqbrKEEV2T8AZw

Image Credits
Personal photo credit goes to Bobby Gordon – @bobgsnapshots on Instagram.