Artist Biography
Díana Rocha is a community-based artist from San Antonio, Texas. Her practice explores the ephemeral nature of life, generational trauma, and cultural reclamation, weaving in themes of feminism, female rage, animal symbolism, and Curanderismo. She works across murals, paintings, and sculpture.
Since 1999, Rocha has been active in community-engaged projects, particularly public murals and their restoration, which serve as cultural beacons for local neighborhoods. She has contributed to the restoration of several murals on San Antonio’s Westside and recently became a Lead Muralist for her own project, Strength Fosters Change, created in collaboration with San Anto Cultural Arts, the City of San Antonio’s Office of Sustainability, and Texas Creative.
In 2013, Rocha interned with Sarah Castillo, Creative Director at Lady Base Gallery, an interdisciplinary and performance artist, and most recently, Lauri Garcia-Jones (Loot Achris), a multidisciplinary artist who creates humanoid portraits with felt material. Rocha’s work has been featured in Saytown Review ‘Zine, News4 San Antonio & Fox 29 San Antonio, San Antonio Report, and That Gray Zine.
She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in painting in Spring 2025 from the University of Texas at San Antonio. In 2024, she was selected for a year-long studio residency at Space C7, where she continues to expand her practice through pyrography, woodcarving, and the integration of naturally occurring materials in her work, deepening her journey of cultural reclamation.
Artist Statement
As a descendant of the Mexica peoples, my work is grounded in cultural reclamation—an act of remembering, reviving, and reimagining ancestral knowledge buried under colonial systems. Inspired by Indigenous shamanistic beliefs, the power of nature, and Curanderismo, my practice weaves healing traditions with themes of resilience, transformation, and animal symbolism.
I seek to illuminate the loss and distortion of Indigenous spiritual practices, challenge colonial frameworks, and affirm the power carried through culture, spirit, and memory. By reclaiming visual language and ceremonial symbolism, I translate ancestral motifs into contemporary forms that speak across time and space.
Through different artistic mediums—currently pyrography, wood carving, and the use of naturally occurring materials—I create works that inhabit liminal spaces—holding both memory and possibility. Carvings are layered with imagery drawn from Mexica cosmologies: animals, plants, and geometric patterns that embody cycles of life, death, and rebirth. The rawness of burned wood, the textures of carved surfaces, and the integration of earth-based materials root each piece in both physical presence and ancestral resonance.
At its core, my practice is both personal and collective: an offering to the ancestors and a dialogue with the present. I approach artmaking as a spiritual, intuitive process of healing and remembrance. Through symbols, natural materials, and ancestral presence, my work becomes a vessel where story, spirit, and cultural memory converge—and where transformation is possible, both individually and collectively.
