Art
art, archive & social justice
Alongside her scholarship, Hernández is a public-facing artist and organizer. Her creative practice extends the archive off the page — into installation, performance, and print — asking who the carceral state renders visible, and who it disappears.
She was the Chair of the City of Albuquerque Public Arts Board and the Working Classroom Board, and grounds her work in a practice that bridges art, language, performance, and affect within the communities most affected by policing, detention, and incarceration.
Fronteristxs Collective
A collective of artists and writers in New Mexico working to end migrant detention and abolish the prison industrial complex through creative activism. Co-founded by Hernández with core members Szu-Han Ho, Hazel Batrezchavez, and Martín Wannam, Fronteristxs stages direct art actions, coalition building, and grassroots organizing — from oversized #FreeThemAll banners installed outside detention centers and courthouses to interventions on public sculpture at the New Mexico State Capitol.
The collective provides free political education for community and youth across New Mexico on transformative justice and abolition, and has partnered with the Prison Divest NM Coalition to push the state's educational retirement fund to divest from private prisons.
#FreeThemAll Zines
A four-part political-education series featuring New Mexico artists and authors — The Impact of Policing, The Prison Industrial Complex, Immigration, and Abolition: Enacting Alternative Futures — with introductions by Hernández and fellow members. Free to download and print.
Exhibitions & Projects
Border Bodies: A Visual Pop-Up Sanitary Tortilla Factory · 2023
A visual companion to the book, pairing a reading and reception with the archival images, objects, and ephemera behind Border Bodies — bringing nineteenth-century borderlands lives into the gallery.
Mobile Abolition Library Ongoing · 2024–
A visual-arts and literacy initiative grounded in an abolitionist framework, housed in a built-out Ford E-Transit van. A collaboration between Hernández and Martín Wannam of Fronteristxs and sheri crider of the Sanitary Tortilla Factory, with contributing artists Delilah Montoya, John-Mark Collins, and Kaitlin Bryson. Traveling in coordination with 2026 exhibitions at SITE Santa Fe, the UNM Art Museum, and the NMSU Art Museum.
#FreeThemAll Actions Fronteristxs · 2020–
Wall-size banner installations and performance interventions staged at the Roundhouse, Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center, and courthouses across Albuquerque — including a caged reframing of a public sculpture at the New Mexico State Capitol.
