Raquel Gutierrez will write on contemporary artistic practices in Los Angeles, focusing on artists who are dealing with poverty, addiction, homophobia, misogyny, the carceral state, and prison industrial complexes. She’s interested in how artists cope with extra-state and state violence, as exemplified in the work of Star Montana, Sebastian Hernández, Guadalupe Rosales of Veteranas & Ruca, Hector Silva, Shizu Saldamando, Raúl Baltazar, and Harry Gamboa.

Raquel Gutierrez has performed her poetry, prose, and essay works locally, nationally and internationally, including at the Hammer Museum, Visual AIDS, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, El Museo del Chopo (Mexico City), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, MOCA (Los Angeles), and Beyond Baroque. Her writing has been anthologized and published in Zócalo Public Square, FENCE, Huizache, Los Angeles Weekly, The Portland Review, ASAP/Journal, GLQ, Raspa Magazine, RECAPS, Make/Shift, SUR Biennial 2013, and Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing. She has written catalog essays for Hector Silva, Shizu Saldamando, Wu Tsang, and Rafa Esparza.