Today we’d like to introduce you to cindy “cindita” macias.
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?
My practice started in childhood & was sparked by a need to make sense of the world around me. Some of the earliest memories around my practice are 1) being shamed for creating collages in the living room & 2) buying candy, selling it at school and being caught. Which inspired my mom to operate a candy house out of our living room. It lasted us a solid 10 years in Compton. After moving for high school, going away for college & coming back home, COVID crept up. For the first time, I had to sit with my realities & repressed memories of childhood abuse & neglect on top of poverty & violence I witnessed at the community level. I started psychotherapy & during a visualization session, I could see me childhood self-creating collage, I could hear my parents scolding me & I broke down crying. All I’ve ever wanted to do was to express who I am at the core, to feel heard and be seen.
Since that revelation & trying different modalities of therapy, I’ve discovered my voice, my passion for creating & my capacity to imagine a better world. Through my art, tangible or not, I seek to spark joy & inspire action in the direction of truth, love & beauty.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Working from a place that honors mental health & well-being has meant honoring *my own* process for (un)learning. Living with PTSD, it’s an ongoing struggle to find community because real feelings of “someone’s out to get me” creep up and it leads me to self-isolation & avoidance. I’m learning that more often than not, it’s not about creating anything tangible, that stuff comes almost naturally, it’s intuitive work which guides me. My thing is that I have to open myself up to be seen, heard and understood, and that’s always viscerally terrifying. It’s something that I know will always be there and I just gotta keep doing work that feels good to me & helps *me* make sense of the world around me and then maybe share it with others.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I like toying with the composition of words to describe myself & the work that I do. These days, I say I’m an interdisciplinary artist & multimedia maker. Everything is connected & I am connected to everything.
Coming from a more academic background, I interlace my visual work with learnings from sociology, psychology, history, literature, etc. It helps me see the ways we are all interconnected and interdependent on one another and in my work seek to bring that into folks’ line of vision. This also makes me curious about our material realities, the differences and similarities which inspire me to create, making the intangible tangible.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
I love that LA is so diverse! We can explore so much culture, nature & art… But I don’t like the traffic & finding parking! It’s always the reason I decide to not go out bc it can be physiologically overwhelming.
Contact Info:
- Website: Cindita.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/cindy_is_as_cindy_does?igshid=NTdlMDg3MTY=
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindy-macias-a75517197
Image Credits
Portrait in Chair by Rosy Cortez for Rancho Los Cerritos
