MEZTLI PROJECTS
Meztli Projects supports the creative development of Native and Indigenous artists.
We were founded with the intent to address the severe lack of artistic opportunities for Native and Indigenous Artists as-well-as systems-impacted youth living and creating in Los Angeles County (Tovaangar). This work takes shape in several forms such as for-hire opportunities, advocating for truly equitable resources such as but not limited to funding and culturally authentic (not just relevant) programming, and training future and emerging cultural workers.
Contact
Instagram
Cj Calica
caitlin.calica@gmail.com
@audienceink
CJ Calica (she/her) is a Filipino American, multimedia artist, photographer, and organizer based in Los Angeles. Their work explores memory, family, and sustainability through mediums like photography and textiles. Rooted in their experience as a second-generation immigrant from a large family, CJ’s practice centers personal histories, intergenerational storytelling, and community-based art. Whether capturing quiet moments in someone’s home or creating collaborative installations, CJ is committed to honoring the emotional and cultural weight of everyday life.
CJ found photography through Las Fotos Project, thanks to her friend Xochitl Cruz, who told her about it and helped her get involved. That space changed everything. For the first time, she had a way to tell stories without needing the perfect words, she could show people who she was through images. Photography became a way to express what she couldn't say out loud, but a quiet form of storytelling that felt honest. She didn’t need to be loud or fashionable or fluent in art-speak. She could just see people and show them as they are.
That’s what drew her to environmental portraiture. Documenting people in their most personal spaces like bedrooms, studios, living rooms that felt like a way of honoring the same in-between she’s lived in her whole life. Her photos are about memory, identity, and the places that make us feel like ourselves, even as everything around us shifts.
Similar Artists
James Mollison
Bruce Gilden
More Art
www.instagram.com/audienceink
What We Leave, What We Keep, 2025
Cj Calica
I photograph people in the spaces where they feel most like themselves like their bedrooms, studios, living rooms, anywhere they call home. These spaces tell stories. They hold the messiness, the comfort, the quiet moments that often go unnoticed but mean everything.
Growing up, my room was my sanctuary. It was the one place I felt grounded. But after moving during high school and again in college, that sense of home started shifting, from my childhood bedroom to a dorm room, to a small apartment in Koreatown. And when the Eaton and Palisades fires hit, it made me think deeply about how fragile and important these spaces are. I realized how easy it is to take them for granted.
This project is about honoring those personal spaces and the people in them and just as they are right now. I use a Sony A7iii with a Sigma 24-70mm lens and a Flashpoint eVOLV 200 Pro flash, keeping lighting true to how my subjects actually live in their spaces. I want these images to serve as a time capsule, a way of holding onto something we’re always growing out of. Because we don’t live very long, and our spaces change, but in them, we find pieces of ourselves.
Opening Night
Exhibtion Photos by Miranda Aquino