Elyla is a cochonx barromestiza, a non-binary performance artist and activist from Chontales, Nicaragua. Their multidisciplinary approach to artmaking often moves between video-performance, installations, photo-performance, experimental theatre, radical activism and site-specific political interventions. Elyla frequently works with the tensions surrounding identity politics, nationalist cultural identity, colonialism, queerness and otherness. They're interested in the narratives that constitute mestizaje, focusing in colonial violence behind mestizo rituals, popular celebrations and other religious demonstrations. Their artistic background is rooted in theatre, mutating to LGBTQ+ activism and community organizing. Elyla is a member and founder of Operación Queer (2013) , a collective formed by Nicaraguan academics, artists and activists in order to create trans-feminist and de-colonial reflections in the Central American regions. As an Artist Protection Fund APF (IIE) Fellow, they recently created their first solo show Barro-Mestiza, proposing a queer/cochona revision of Nicaraguan folklore, exploring the meaning of mestizaje in their own lived experience and embracing the possibilities for palpable local queer utopia. Elyla is currently exploring how to disrupt hegemonic cultural narratives through clay/mud work in order to reclaim their cochoneidad/queerness as ancestral memory and knowledge. Weaving from these different spaces, their work keeps becoming a research territory where they create new imaginaries and aesthetics intersecting with art, activism, and life itself.