AztecaNegra

My name is Marisol Catchings, and I am an Afro-Latin artist and owner of Azteca Negra, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA. The inspiration behind Azteca Negra is all about cultural representation. Eight years ago, I had searched high and low for clothing, jewelry, or accessories that allowed me to express my cultural identity and came up short. I decided that I would create for myself what I was unable to find in the marketplace, and Azteca Negra was born!

Over the years, I have designed and handcrafted jewelry, headwraps, accessories and home decor that is a mixture of African and Latinx cultures. Each year, my mother and I travel to Mexico to handpick all of the authentic cambaya fabric that I use in most of my art. I use mainly authentic Latinx textiles mixed with Indigenous and African aesthetics and traditional symbols as inspiration for my designs. My goal for creating these pieces is to offer messages of self-love, self-care, cultural and ancestral celebration through everyday adornments. Much like in the United States, Latin America also has a long history of enslavement of African peoples and oppression of both Indigenous and Black people. In many countries, there can be sentiments of anti-Blackness/Indigenous people, which has lead to lack of representation and in history, arts, media, etc. Azteca Negra is working to celebrate and uplift folks who identify as Black or Indigenous. Borrowing from author Junot Diaz, my goal is to create tiny mirrors (in the form of accessories) that allow people to see themselves represented in art and culture.

Update: Within days of COVID-19 quarantine measures and announcements of lack of PPE, my mother and I sprang into action creating quality cotton masks to donate to healthcare workers, many of them Black and Latinx (two of the hardest hit communities in the US). Word of mouth spread quickly and over the past few months, we have donated more than 500 masks to healthcare workers across the nation, and provided more than 2,000 handcrafted masks within the Black and Latinx communities. Because of our pivot to mask making, we have received some really amazing press coverage from cultural blogs to NBC, CNN, Telemundo, and Cosmopolitan Magazine, sharing about the work that we are doing for our community!