Artist and Filmmaker Adelina Anthony Talks Art and Activism
Artist and filmmaker, Adelina Anthony, identifies as a “Two-Spirit Xicana Lesbiana Artista.” is the current creator/facilitator of Teatro Q-a space for Two-Spirit + QTPOC to study and practice performance and writing. Adelina has also been an Artist-in-Residence/Teaching Artist/Playwright-in-Residence/Lecturer at NIDEC in Minneapolis; allgo in Austin (a Texas Statewide Queer People of Color Organization); La Peña Cultural Center; Los Angeles LGBT Center; TheatreWorks; San Francisco Mexican Museum of Art; UCLA Theatre Summer Program; the UCLA CERC Program; and U.C. Berkeley Ethnic Studies to name a few. Jasmine D. Lowe, the Managing Editor at Q26, got the chance to interview her over the phone.
Adelina Anthony
Jasmine D. Lowe: So, you’re the eldest of eight children. How was that like?
Adelina Anthony: Well, you know, growing up I can tell you it wasn't always the easiest thing. And I think my younger siblings would also make the same claim that being in a family of eight. It definitely had its challenges, but in hindsight, there's also this incredible gift of just this family that I do have. I try to keep a relationship active with almost all of my siblings. And when you have a family that large, there's also a significant age difference sometimes. There's an 11-year difference between myself and the youngest in our sibling clan. But no, I feel like at the end of the day, coming from a large family, even with all of its challenges and we're all so different, we're all shaped by the core of my mother's heart and spirit. Which I think just gives us all the base of hopeful evolution and transformation just as who we are. Where do you fall in line with your family?
Jasmine: I just have one younger sister.
Adelina: Okay, but still, I mean, there's always this pressure. I think when you're the eldest, whether you put it on yourself or your parents do, or your family of being a role model and just trying to set a good example for your younger siblings. I think I did that up to a point, but then I also have always been the rebel artist and that has its own kind of role modeling.
Jasmine: What guided you towards your work in film, the arts, and theater. Was that part of your upbringing?
Adelina: Yes and no. There wasn't anyone in my immediate family that was a quote, professional artist, so to speak, but my mother was a very animated individual and she had such an incredible knack for storytelling and her sense of humor infected all of our lives in the best way possible. We, we faced a lot of poverty and the issues that come about when your culture in your family and in your mother are not deemed as individuals that are deserving of so many things. But I can say that my mother's love of music, and just how we learned to appreciate culturally what was ours as Mexican American kids as these little Chicanx children absolutely influenced why I wanted to make art because I felt growing up.
I definitely didn't see representation, or images of my family. Not in any complex way and not in any way that felt like we too were part of a film for sure. Television, for sure at that time and theater. I only had exposure to theater through public school. We would have never been able to look forward to going to an actual theater production. So, again, it wasn't until I left home for college and started working in small professional theaters in Dallas, that I came back home to San Antonio and learned of different cultural organizations. Sometimes people make assumptions like, Oh, you must've gone to this cultural organization growing up. And I was like, Nope, never heard of them. Even though I grew up in San Antonio, if you're poor, you just don't have access to even some of these amazing organizations that work with lower-income communities.
But I will say that what I'm clear about today is that the love that I always felt for my mother and her sacrifices has made me want to make art that makes her proud. She passed away many years ago, but I still feel and have a relationship with her energy and presence. I'm still on that path of I've been given life and she, to the best of her abilities through all that she had to overcome and suffer, really encouraged me to be an artist. In that way I feel really blessed that I am not beholden to any kind of corporate mandates that I make art because it's healing. First and foremost, for myself and then my hope and wishes that it provides medicine for others in my community.
Jasmine: So, is there anything that you're working on right now, or anything that you were planning on working on in the upcoming year?
Adelina: I am working on a project, but I don't know that I am at liberty to talk about it. I'm a co-writer for, so there will be something coming out next year that I'm a creative collaborator on, and that's, it's not something that I initiated, but I got brought on board. As for my own original works, to be honest, I feel like there are creative stories that will come out, but I've been trying to pay attention to what it means to work the land at this moment. I mean, talk about full circle with my mother, who in my family was the last one to work the fields in Texas. She used to have to harvest in these harsh conditions like lettuce fields and all these other crops.
It's interesting. My wife and I had talked about this because my wife worked the fields here in California, in Ventura County as a child and growing up. Her family is an immigrant family. And during these pandemic times what it's meant to cultivate our own garden and to put our hands in the dirt. I bring that up and I speak about it very honestly, that our notions of creativity I feel really have to get expanded because it is so creative to work in collaboration with mother nature and all of its little creatures. To be in a place where it's a balance to the activism that we're trying to do online or in person, with a sense of safety right now. So that is what I'm doing.
I'm being as creative as possible with land. And I was laughing because had I known I would enjoy this so much. I think I would have become a landscape artist or an artist who works with a fair femoral quality of nature. I'm trying to stay present, and still and do creative ideas and voices come to me? Yes. All the time. But I'm also trying to really when we come back out of this pandemic and our uprisings, I felt like I was doing this a few years before all of this hit, but this period is really cementing for me, how important it is for artists not to become part of the cog in capitalism and to create, because we don't know how to be still, or we don't know how to sit in our fear.
I'm actually stopping myself from just jumping into full-on creation mode because I work in comedy a lot too. I prefer to do a critical comedy and I just know it's my job right now to be an active witness so that down the line, the work I create can speak to. So, I'm in awe and admiration of artists who are creating right now and are doing that. I may do something, I don't have any limits on myself, but I think for my personal task right now, it's really trying to figure out moving forward, how do we continue to uplift black lives matter and center black trans women, and really do the work that continues to promote social equity in this profound way that we have collectively found precisely because we have been forced to stop in so many areas.
Jasmine: What advice do you have for young queer folks who are trying to showcase their art, raise their voice, and share their story with the world?
Adelina: Keep doing what they're doing. I think that young people right now, especially young QTPOC have really done a beautiful job of taking advantage of the digital media and the social media sites that are available to them. But I would also highly insist that they take care of their souls and their spirits because digital media, social media can also be very life draining. So, it's important to stay involved in the organic world. And right now, it's kind of, it's very dangerous to actually gather with gloves, but you know, all of us can and must rely on each other. So I would say finding your, your, your tribe, who's your community, that in these moments you can both be an artist and just human being and by a human being, I mean, that, that you, you establish these reciprocal relationships where you're sharing work, you're sharing your fears and you're looking collectively how to better your artistic skills.
If that means resting more these days, then, by all means, you know, rest and sleep and nurture that young artist soul and know that you're part of a continuum and that you have queer legacy and that there are people who have come before you, and that there are people coming right after you, and that all of us need each other and this beautiful beaded necklace, right. And that we all have a way that we can reflect and shine the best of each other and keep learning from each other. But I'm just I just want to say to a young QTPOC that they make me very hopeful and that I hope they know that the people who've come before them are rooting for them and praying for them.
Adelina Anthony continues to teach components of Teatro Q-a space for Two-Spirit + QTPOC to study and practice performance and writing workshops at cultural centers and college campuses. Currently, she teaches private classes in performance for theater/film and writing for youth and adults. For more information about Adelina’s work, visit adelinaanthony.com.
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