Blog | Rebecca Nava Soto

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I am strengthened by this community and the growing heart-led masses standing in their own inner authority against the brutality of ICE. For those of us with Mexican and Central American descent, our Uto-Aztecan roots stretch back over 4,000 years—linking us genetically, linguistically and culturally to Uto-Aztecan nations in present day "United States" these are the Hopi, Ute, and O’odham across the Four Corners region—extending through the Shoshone, Paiute, and Comanche people. migration isn’t trespass; it’s sacred continuity. we go from our land to our land.

I am strengthened by this community and the growing heart-led masses standing in their own inner authority against the brutality of ICE. For those of us with Mexican and Central American descent, our Uto-Aztecan roots stretch back over 4,000 years—linking us genetically, linguistically and culturally to Uto-Aztecan nations in present day "United States" these are the Hopi, Ute, and O’odham across the Four Corners region—extending through the Shoshone, Paiute, and Comanche people. migration isn’t trespass; it’s sacred continuity. we go from our land to our land.

This artwork is a spell.

Skybundle: A Codex Transmitter is a glyph-sigil—a covert magical inscription operating beneath dominant language, compressing intention into pictographic marks and fixing it materially to endure and transmit.

This work is a spell of protection, power, and reorientation—directed toward Indigenous Mexican and Central American peoples whose ancestors developed complex systems of agriculture, architecture, science, mathematics, writing, and ecological knowledge—and who are now being hunted, detained, disappeared, and murdered by the U.S. government through ICE, along with those who defend them.
These are my people. Our people. People whose origins are inseparable from this land.

The spell also calls on the reawakening of archaic orientations carried across Cincinnati’s many diasporas—worldviews that predate modern borders and institutions: ways of living where humans participate in living systems rather than dominate them; where land, materials, and beings are animate and relational; where knowledge moves through body, land, science, art, and ritual; and where magic is a cultivated way of relating to the world—eclipsed when mechanistic systems replaced reciprocity with control.

Painted Woodchip shavings draw from alfombra traditions practiced collectively in immigrant Catholic neighborhoods, rooted in precolonial ritual ground works. Embossed metal draws from milagritos and precolonial Indigenous metallurgical traditions; its imagery is sourced from archaic systems of divination and cosmology carried by Cincinnati’s diasporic communities—systems that predate modern language structures.
The glyph-sigil operates through inscription and imaginal ritual as a technology of enactment. With gratitude to @artworkscincy and the perfect team who carried this work into being including @sheribesso (magician who created the substrates for my design), @j_sh0e, @raiq.studios, @adrienne__dixon and to the @ohioartscouncil for supporting the research behind it.

Here’s to 2026. The signal goes live. #ChingaLaMigra
#IndigenousFutures
#RitualAsResistance
#ArchaicRevival
#GlyphSigil
#OhioArtist #xicanxart #latinxart #ThisIsASpell

This artwork is a spell.

Skybundle: A Codex Transmitter is a glyph-sigil—a covert magical inscription operating beneath dominant language, compressing intention into pictographic marks and fixing it materially to endure and transmit.

This work is a spell of protection, power, and reorientation—directed toward Indigenous Mexican and Central American peoples whose ancestors developed complex systems of agriculture, architecture, science, mathematics, writing, and ecological knowledge—and who are now being hunted, detained, disappeared, and murdered by the U.S. government through ICE, along with those who defend them.
These are my people. Our people. People whose origins are inseparable from this land.

The spell also calls on the reawakening of archaic orientations carried across Cincinnati’s many diasporas—worldviews that predate modern borders and institutions: ways of living where humans participate in living systems rather than dominate them; where land, materials, and beings are animate and relational; where knowledge moves through body, land, science, art, and ritual; and where magic is a cultivated way of relating to the world—eclipsed when mechanistic systems replaced reciprocity with control.

Painted Woodchip shavings draw from alfombra traditions practiced collectively in immigrant Catholic neighborhoods, rooted in precolonial ritual ground works. Embossed metal draws from milagritos and precolonial Indigenous metallurgical traditions; its imagery is sourced from archaic systems of divination and cosmology carried by Cincinnati’s diasporic communities—systems that predate modern language structures.
The glyph-sigil operates through inscription and imaginal ritual as a technology of enactment. With gratitude to @artworkscincy and the perfect team who carried this work into being including @sheribesso (magician who created the substrates for my design), @j_sh0e, @raiq.studios, @adrienne__dixon and to the @ohioartscouncil for supporting the research behind it.

Here’s to 2026. The signal goes live. #ChingaLaMigra
#IndigenousFutures
#RitualAsResistance
#ArchaicRevival
#GlyphSigil
#OhioArtist #xicanxart #latinxart #ThisIsASpell

felices fiestas

felices fiestas

A first look: This work, Turtle Island, is one part of my larger installation Skybundle, opening as a permanent piece at the new Duke Energy Center in January 2026.

Posting this today when the national storyline feels far from the histories it rests on.

While working on the design this piece, I kept circling back to the shared Turtle Island creation story held across original peoples of what’s now Mexico, Central America, and the present-day United States — a continental cosmology pointing to shared origins in the American Southwest. Many of their descendants now face detention, family separation, and inhumane deportation for moving across the very land shaped by their first peoples.

The Turtle Island story carries its own sense of time — slow, steady, long-lived — qualities embodied in the turtle as a creator-being. The form in this piece is the Maya glyph representing the primordial turtle, a symbol that appears across distant nations as an older form of pan-Indigenous solidarity and a memory that predates borders and the systems that divide. That reach is echoed in the worldwide-archaic nations motifs embossed along the metallic edge. I added antennae as transmitter and receptor — sending out a pulse of solidarity and an SOS across land, lineage, and time with a steadiness that doesn’t disappear. Turtle Island 3.5 ft x 3.5 ft
Painted wood shavings, embossed metal. Research and development for this project was supported by @ohioartscouncil.
#TurtleIsland
#Skybundle
#RebeccaNavaSoto
#MayaGlyphs
#IndigenousArt
#XicanxArt
#MesoamericanArt

A first look: This work, Turtle Island, is one part of my larger installation Skybundle, opening as a permanent piece at the new Duke Energy Center in January 2026.

Posting this today when the national storyline feels far from the histories it rests on.

While working on the design this piece, I kept circling back to the shared Turtle Island creation story held across original peoples of what’s now Mexico, Central America, and the present-day United States — a continental cosmology pointing to shared origins in the American Southwest. Many of their descendants now face detention, family separation, and inhumane deportation for moving across the very land shaped by their first peoples.

The Turtle Island story carries its own sense of time — slow, steady, long-lived — qualities embodied in the turtle as a creator-being. The form in this piece is the Maya glyph representing the primordial turtle, a symbol that appears across distant nations as an older form of pan-Indigenous solidarity and a memory that predates borders and the systems that divide. That reach is echoed in the worldwide-archaic nations motifs embossed along the metallic edge. I added antennae as transmitter and receptor — sending out a pulse of solidarity and an SOS across land, lineage, and time with a steadiness that doesn’t disappear. Turtle Island 3.5 ft x 3.5 ft
Painted wood shavings, embossed metal. Research and development for this project was supported by @ohioartscouncil.
#TurtleIsland
#Skybundle
#RebeccaNavaSoto
#MayaGlyphs
#IndigenousArt
#XicanxArt
#MesoamericanArt

Got to share a bit about Indigenous Mexico today at the kiddos’ school, TNSM, alongside @ronnienava — a true champion for Indigenous Mexican immigrants, whom she advocates for and fights to protect every day through her work. 🌎✨💪🏽🐢🏝️
#MexicoIsANativeAmericanCountry #MigrationIsNaturalAndSacred #MilagritosArt #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth

Got to share a bit about Indigenous Mexico today at the kiddos’ school, TNSM, alongside @ronnienava — a true champion for Indigenous Mexican immigrants, whom she advocates for and fights to protect every day through her work. 🌎✨💪🏽🐢🏝️
#MexicoIsANativeAmericanCountry #MigrationIsNaturalAndSacred #MilagritosArt #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth

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