Mariana Trujillo-Lezama (she/they) is a transdisciplinary artist, facilitator, dancer, events curator, and creative producer from Cali, Colombia, based on the unceded and ancestral lands and waters of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓- and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh-speaking peoples—specifically the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations—in so-called Vancouver, British Columbia.
Their artistic practice moves across writing, performance, dance, printmaking, painting, collage, ceramics, and interactive work. Centring care, storytelling, embodiment, desire, and expression, Mariana explores how art, movement, and gathering can build community and support collective healing. Grounded in the queer immigrant experience, their work engages respectability politics, femme sexual liberation, gendered expectations, pleasure, and the reclamation of visibility and self-definition.
Pop culture references, meme aesthetics, humour, and visual excess operate as contemporary vernaculars within their work. Informed by a Colombian upbringing shaped by maximalism, street signage, vendor calls, food carts, music, and religious imagery, Mariana embraces saturation, contradiction, and abundance as forms of cultural memory and inheritance.
Since 2019, Mariana has worked in inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility, supporting anti-racist and trauma-responsive initiatives through facilitation, workshop design, communications, event production, and relationship-based coordination. They have produced and curated events for audiences of up to 300 people, overseeing programming, logistics, communications, partnerships, vendors, and participant experience.
Mariana is a co-founder and Programming Coordinator at The Playground Studio. Across their artistic, community-based, and professional work, they bring together creativity, strategic coordination, cultural humility, accessibility, and relational care to create meaningful spaces for connection, co-learning, and collective healing.