JULYSA SOSA
multidisciplinary artist
Julysa Sosa (she/they) is a Xicana Tejana artist, storyteller, and speaker whose practice spans fine art, portraiture photography, moving image, and mixed media installation. Based in Myaamionki (Indianapolis), she works from a permanent studio space where every medium serves the same purpose.
The story comes first. The medium follows.
Her practice began in documentary photography. Over time, it grew into whatever the story required. New forms, new mediums, new ways of holding what a camera alone couldn't carry. That evolution is not a departure. It is fidelity to the work.
A detribalized Xicanx and descendant of the Nahua people, Sosa's work holds the complexity of modern Xicana identity. Not romantically fixed in the past, not performing heritage, fully present in what it means to be here now. Her practice moves through questions of identity, cultural memory, and the sovereignty of the gaze.
She is the founder of S.O.S.A. Studio LLC, a referral-based creative partnership studio supporting culture-driven work with precision and care. She speaks at universities, cultural institutions, brands, and conferences, drawing from a decade of marketing and branding experience alongside her fine art and documentary practice. Her talks span identity, strategic storytelling, decolonized aesthetics, and Indigenous futurism as a framework for creative longevity.
She holds a BA in Journalism & Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Artist Statement
My practice is an ongoing act of reconnection. As a detribalized Xicanx and descendant of the Nahua people, I work through dreaming, remembering, and documenting. Resisting the erasure of who I am and where I come from.
The ancient is not confined to the past. It moves forward. My existence and everything I make carry that continuity.
The practice began in documentary photography and has grown into whatever form the story requires. Fine art, portraiture, digital work, mixed media installation. The medium follows the story. It always has.
In this work, I seek symmetry. A space where past, present, and future coexist. Where the complexity of modern Xicana identity is held without being flattened, performed, or explained away.
You are not a passive witness. Your perception activates something real.
In this work, live every version of the maker. The one not yet conceived. The one becoming. The one already gone and held in the ancestral network. All present. All arrived at once.
Time does not move in one direction here.
The work lives because you see it.
Tlazohkamati