Chela Ixcopal
Chela Ixcopal, born in Princeton, New Jersey, and based in Philadelphia for the past 10+ years, began their art journey in 2018 after graduating from Moore College of Art and Design. They are a multidisciplinary teacher, curator, book designer, artist, Bruja, and emerging writer. Drawing from their Mayan Guatemalan and Ecuadorian roots, Chela’s work cultivates healing spaces that explore social justice, cultural identity, and ancestral knowledge through lived experience and collective memory.
From 2018 to 2020, Chela played a vital role in the campaign to close the Berks County Detention Center, a facility known for detaining immigrant families. Through creative resistance and community-centered art, they helped amplify the voices of those impacted—contributing to the center’s eventual closure in 2023. In 2024, Chela co-commemorated this victory with an exhibition honoring community resilience.
As a curator, Chela is dedicated to uplifting emerging BIPOC artists. In 2024, they co-curated Indivisible: A Celebration of Immigrants, Refugees, and the Pursuit of Freedom—a Fourth of July exhibition responding to anti-immigration policies.
In addition to their curatorial work, Chela is a devoted educator who nurtures young artists through culturally grounded, justice-centered curricula. Their teaching practice emphasizes art as a tool for liberation, healing, and identity-building, often rooted in accessible materials and ancestral memory.
As a Bruja, Chela approaches ceremony and movement as sacred acts—spiritual expressions that carry the memory, strength, and stories of their ancestors. These are acts of cultural survival and connection.
Chela uses he/they pronouns in predominantly white spaces and is flexible with he/they/she pronouns within BIPOC communities. Their work continues to challenge systems, celebrate community, and keep ancestral knowledge alive.
Awarded Grants
2025
Residencies
Related grantees
Overview
Leeway x Fleisher’s 2025 Visual Artist-in-Residence, Chela Ixcopal will focus their residency on developing a multidisciplinary oral history and visual storytelling project that amplifies the voices of Philadelphians who have lost family members to deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Rooted in their own lived experience, Chela’s work explores how deportation reshapes identity, memory, and daily life, particularly for those who endured family separation in childhood and now navigate adulthood in its aftermath. Through photography, video, narrative writing, and bookmaking, Chela will create a collective archive that honors resilience while resisting erasure.
As part of the residency, Chela will lead community-based creative writing and collage-making workshops where participants can craft visual letters to themselves in the form of mini-books. These sessions will serve as trauma-informed spaces for reflection, self-expression, and healing. Stories gathered through interviews, with participants guiding how they are shared, will be incorporated into a manuscript alongside Chela’s own reflections, ultimately forming a collaborative publication.
The residency will culminate in a public celebration that brings together participants, families, and community members, as well as a panel discussion and artist talk highlighting storytelling as a form of resistance. Chela will also share selections from portraiture, documentary video, and visual art created during the residency, in dialogue with local organizers and immigrant justice advocates.
2023
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
Related grantees
Overview
Chela Ixcopal’s project will raise awareness around medical deportation – when hospitals deport uninsured immigrant patients from the U.S. without their consent, or through coerced consent to avoid paying for continued care. Through visual art and community art builds, Chela will develop a visual and media identity for the End Medical Deportation Campaign. This project will serve two purposes: To provide a know-your-rights approach to protecting immigrant community members, as well as educate elected officials and the public on the need for policies and legislation to prevent medical deportation.