About the Exhibition: Botas de Charro explores the mariachi community in Los Angeles through cultural identity, tradition, and belonging. Drawing from her experience as a mariachi violinist and vocalist, Josefina Guadalupe Chavez photographs musicians who have shaped her artistic formation across classroom settings, rehearsals, backyard celebrations, and concert stages. These portraits punctuate the presence and individuality of her subjects while evoking a broader cultural landscape—one in which music operates as both practice and inheritance.

This series is shaped by Chavez’s experience as a first-generation artist navigating a yearning for her cultural roots. Mariachi becomes a means of negotiating this liminal space, offering a tangible connection to heritage and collective identity. Her work explores how traditions are preserved and transformed across generations and locations.

Moving between documentation and reflection, Botas de Charro positions mariachi not only as a musical form, but as an enduring social and cultural framework. The project honors a community that sustains tradition across borders and gestures toward its continued evolution within the fabric of Los Angeles. Mariachi emerges as both inheritance and act of becoming—a space where memory is held, identity is performed, and belonging is continuously shaped.

About the Artist: Josefina Guadalupe Chavez (b. 2006, Los Angeles, CA) is a Mexican American lens-based artist working primarily in portraiture. Raised in Los Angeles, Chavez is informed by her experience growing up between cultures and considers how the primary driving force behind her work is the Mexican American community of Los Angeles. Members of the community, while hardworking and resilient, create spaces of belonging and home even while far from their native lands. Her work serves as a living archive of the community that has raised her.

Photography is a way for Chavez to build a living record of a culture she actively participates in and keeps alive from the inside. She documents her community because she belongs to it. By photographing those within her immediate circle—mentors, peers, and companeros through trust and shared experience, she allows her subjects to be seen entirely on their own terms. Her work is grounded in unforced authenticity that can only come from within the community itself.