Today we’d like to introduce you to Hesiquio Mendez Alejo.
Hesiquio, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
My unique story starts like many other immigrant stories. I was born in the State of Mexico with indigenous roots from Oaxaca. I am part of a family of six, and I am the youngest son. I grew up in Mexico up until I was twelve. I remember my mom talking to my dad about coming to the US to work because my family was struggling financially. I convinced my mom to take me with her because I also did not feel safe.
Growing up in Los Angeles, I played a lot of video games, which came down to economics and safety. My mom would prefer for me to stay home safe while she was working. Games also helped me learn English because I wanted to understand them. I went to a performing arts high school. The beauty of music is that I did not need to know English. I learned how to play trumpet back in Mexico, which helped me to take a lot of music classes. I did not have a school plan, and University seemed impossible because of my immigration status. So I went to community college. On the weekends I would play in a Mariachi to make some money.
While being in Pasadena City College, I enjoyed taking all kinds of classes, eventually decided to go for computer science because my mom wanted me to work on something that would allow me to make a living. I didn’t know what I was doing. It took almost four years to transfer from Pasadena city college. The reason I started to look into transferring was Java(programming) class, and our final was to create a video game. My first game was horrible looking, but it worked, that was the moment I realized I wanted to learn how to design games. I started to look into it and found it was a career and people can study how to make games. I transferred to UC Santa Cruz to study games. I wanted to use video games as a platform to talk about my experiences and my identity. I am currently on the last year of my Master’s degree at USC, something I once thought was unreachable. I have been an Intern at LEGO and current Intern at Tender Claws. I am also an adjunct at Pasadena City College, where I teach game design.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I am a game designer. While in my studies, I have used games as a platform to talk about my identity of being an immigrant and indigenous. I use video games because I can use the skills I have learned by being curious. The combination of science, art, design, and music along with other people is what I really enjoy. I have made games about immigration and being indigenous. There are not many games about those topics and wanted to make meaningful games about immigration and my culture. The beauty of video games is having agency or the illusion of agency that allows for players to have meaningful emotions or experience because they chose to play with a system, and they saw the outcome of their choices.
How can artists connect with other artists?
Be passionate and find passionate people, find those people, It might take a bit but “el que busca, encuentra” if you look for it, you’ll find it. For video games, there are groups like LatinX in Gaming, where I have found a place as a game developer.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
My website is hesimendez.com I think the best way to support is to play non-conventional games, play games that come from organizations like Gameheads or Games for Change, and indie games.
Contact Info:
- Website: hesimendez.net
- Email: hesi,[email protected]
- Twitter: @hesimendez
Image Credit:
“Juanito el Nahualito” photos by Team Nahual. The “Immigration Game” photos by UC Santa Cruz AGPM.
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