Ako Castuera is an artist based in Los Angeles, with family roots spreading from the Ryukyu Islands and Mexico. Her sculptures and textiles are offerings and conduits of intersection and transformation, taking form as psychopomps, objects of protection, play, and tools for navigating complex and unfolding experiences. Ako is an exhibiting artist also known for her work as an Emmy Award–winning director of City of Ghosts and story artist on Adventure Time.
What does it mean to make drawings, especially over other art forms?
The feeling of a moment and a body’s movement is something that drawing is especially suited to holding. I’m turning to drawing as a practice in a time of uncertainty and unknowingness as a way to create handholds on a reality made increasingly slippery by the scale and amount of upheaval in realms personal and public. In my work as a sculptor, builder, and storyteller for studio animated series, drawing is often a way for me to think through linear, spatial, or narrative problems. In this moment, however, I’m interested in leaning away from utility and exploring the visceral, emotive quality of drawing as a process of mark-making and recording, more direct and immediate than other art forms.
What kind(s) of rituals are embedded in your drawing practice?
This piece was made as a record of my daily life in the month of May 2025. I had no rituals, but the drawing became a ritual piece for me as my family suddenly and unexpectedly lost a beloved member: Pepiux to his siblings, Tio Pepe to me. While he was in hospice, I dug into the wool as a prayer to anchor my consciousness to his passage. Afterwards, I continued to surround his partial portrait with images and linework, noticing how thin and delicate the wool was in this part of the piece, and creating a prayer with the lines I added— that they would keep the fibers connected, the way active sharing of memory holds together the ongoing-ness of those who have died. For me it’s impossible to reflect on the month of May without naming loss and grief, in my family, in Palestine, in the families in the US suffering separation and deportation.
In what ways does Los Angeles influence (or not) your approach to drawing?
Drawing is possibly the most direct visual expression of the mind, body, and spirit of a person. Born and raised in LA County from Claremont to Hollywood; living, working, and playing in Burbank, Pasadena, Koreatown, Altadena, Silverlake, J-town, the SGV, and Echo Park; the foothills and the beaches—I can’t separate who I am from the places, neighborhoods, and neighbors who give me shape. The variety of landscape and texture I experience in a given week or year gives me a wide vocabulary of pattern and shape, language, inspiration, and energy.