The 2025 exhibition program at Flagship launches with Sacred Signs, a presentation of Tulsa Artist Fellowship awardee video works by composer and sound artist Micaela Tobin (APOLAKI: Opera of the Scorched Earth) and multidisciplinary artist and activist Alicia Smith (Teomama, Erendira, I Believe You, Hueatoyatzintli, Cihuamichi, Tonantzin, Toci - Chapter 1: The Bat Women). 

Composer and sound artist Micaela Tobin wields her soprano voice against the confines of convention, specializing in experimental and contemporary realms of opera and noise. Micaela focuses on building connections between the physical voice and one’s "inner" voice as a means of empowerment, challenging colonial stories and systems. Integrating voice with electronics, ritualized gesture and amplified object-symbolism, she weaves dynamic music that is at once alluring and demanding. As composer and director, Micaela presented her opera film at REDCAT in 2021, titled BAKUNAWA: Opera of the Seven Moons, an adaptation of the album under her music project, White Boy Scream. Continuing her series celebrating precolonial mythology of the Philippines, Micaela premiered her second opera in 2023, APOLAKI: Opera of the Scorched Earth, at the historic Zorthian Ranch. Micaela is the recipient of the 2021 MAP Fund, the 2022 NPN Creation & Development Fund, and was most recently awarded the 2024 Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. She is currently based in Tulsa, OK, as an awardee of the 2025-2027 Tulsa Artist Fellowship.

APOLAKI: Opera of the Scorched Earth (44:44min)
Live Performance Documentation (2023)

Created by Micaela Tobin with Jay Carlon
Principal Photography by Dalton Panganiban
Editing by Dalton Panganiban and Micaela Tobin

A displaced God walks a foreign and unfamiliar land, looking for liberation beyond the Empire of the Sun. But what is beyond the horizon, and who has walked this path before?

APOLAKI: Opera of the Scorched Earth is an experimental opera created by Filipino-American composer and performer Micaela Tobin. This is the second opera in her trilogy of works celebrating the pre-colonial mythology of the Philippines and tells the story of Apolaki, the God of Sun and War, who finds themself lost in a foreign and unfamiliar land after being displaced by Spanish colonizers. The opera is a radical meditation on the complex relationships between settler colonialism and migration by inviting the audience to join Apolaki in an immersive pilgrimage through a walking labyrinth. The performance was filmed over two nights in July 2023 at the historic and storied Zorthian Ranch overlooking the Los Angeles Basin. 

APOLAKI expresses our complicated relationship with the land, embedded in real relationships and stories from the sites on which it is created and shared. It examines how our interlocking histories are in constant (dis)harmony but also notates an intimate and beautiful poetry that is screaming to be heard. How we came to be “here” is complicated, noisy, and nuanced. Zorthian Ranch is located on the unceded ancestral lands of the Gabrielino-Tongva People, and eventually ended up in the hands of a gentle artist named Jirayr Zorthian—a refugee who was forced from his ancestral lands by genocide. Jirayr worked to shape the land into a refuge for artists, philosophers, and dreamers from all walks of life, and today, it is taken care of by his living descendants and a community of people dedicated to stewarding that mission. 

In January 2025, the devastating wildfires in Southern California destroyed most of the ranch, including homes, countless artworks, and the barn where APOLAKI premiered. 

“As for me, I grew up in those foothills, a few miles east of Zorthian Ranch. As a child, I would hike the mountains with my late father, where he taught me the art of walking trails in a quiet, graceful reverence to the natural environment. I soon came to learn that the mountains speak, if you listen, and ever since, they have been a safe place for me to escape the noise of Los Angeles. Now, I am deeply honored to reverberate the next iteration of APOLAKI into Tulsa, Oklahoma. In Summer of 2026, we will walk with Apolaki over the horizon, and our liberation will become a joyful dance, once again. In the labyrinth, there is one winding path that leads towards the center—follow it there, and you shall be transformed.” — Micaela Tobin

The 2023 premiere of APOLAKI: Opera of the Scorched Earth was a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions in partnership with OUTsider Festival, and NPN. The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). Additional support provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Alicia Smith is a Xicana Multidisciplinary Artist and Activist who is currently a fellow at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Oklahoma with an emphasis in Contemporary Sculpture and Printmaking and her Master of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her work utilizes ancestral prayer technologies, oral tradition, indigenous futurism, and New Weird Science Fiction to interrogate colonial narratives and explore identity. Through this practice, she advocates for cultural perpetuity as a response to the unfolding Anthropocene. Smith’s work has been shown at Pulse Contemporary Art Fair in Miami, Untitled Art Fair in San Francisco, A.I.R. Gallery, Field Projects, and Ortega y Gasset in New York City. Additionally, she was a resident at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and her pieces have been included in the Kaddist Collection and the Whitney Museum of Art’s Special Collections.

Teomama (5:41min)
Erendira (7:13min)
I Believe You (3:00min)
Hueatoyatzintli (3:10min)
Cihuamichi (2:07min) 
Tonantzin (4:00min)
Toci - Chapter 1: The Bat Women (4:17min)

Teomama is a performance piece that honors the ancestral role of the Teomamas, medicine carriers in Nahuatl tradition, who transported the bones of Huitzilopochtli across Mexico in search of a sacred sign. The artist embodies the Teomama, carrying a female hawk on her back as a symbol of Tenochtitlan, the land where the prophecy of the eagle and the snake was realized. Her body merges with the water and light, creating a contact zone between the human and more-than-human worlds, embodying an ethic of kinship with nature. Drawing on Melissa K. Nelson's work on Native women's bodies as meeting places, the piece invokes the Cuauhxicalli, the offering stone, as a vessel for sacred sacrifice and cosmic blood transfusion, confronting the reality of the earth's hunger. 

In Erendira, the artist addresses the intersection of anti-immigrant and anti-Indigenous rhetoric, challenging the vilification of Mexicans and Central Americans in the U.S. The piece features a video in which the voice of a Purepecha woman recounts the story of Erendira, a warrior princess who defied colonization, while two Escaramuza riders move gracefully around the frame, holding a rebozo that symbolizes an unbreakable connection to their ancestors. The rebozo, like an artery or umbilical cord, represents a legacy of strength, survival, and resistance that remains intact despite the shifting forces of history. This work reclaims Indigenous and immigrant narratives, refusing their erasure and reappropriating them as an expression of an indomitable, unassailable spirit.

In I Believe You, the artist transforms into a deer-woman hybrid, cradling a fawn and whispering "I believe you" as she walks down a road, followed by a wolf. Drawing from conversations about trauma and recovery, particularly around the #MeToo movement, the work explores the deep emotional impact of being believed or disbelieved as a survivor of assault. The piece is a meditation on both personal and collective trauma, extending beyond sexual violence to encompass physical, generational, and systemic harm. Through the figure of the deer-woman, the work connects to Gloria Anzaldúa's Cervicide, embodying a survivor’s journey and the trauma witnessed across generations, while invoking a ritual of validation and care. 

This performance art piece, Hueatoyatzintli, meditates on grief, memory, and the ongoing violence along the Rio Grande, particularly in the wake of migrant deaths. The artist sings a Nahuatl poem to the river, invoking it as a keeper of ancestral memory and mourning for those lost, including recent tragedies like the drowning of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria. Through a blood-letting ritual and the symbolism of a rebozo shawl, the artist connects personal suffering with the river's history, asking if it remembers. The work reflects on who bears witness to suffering and the mercy in that act, drawing inspiration from Eve Tuck’s writing on genocide and Rebecca Belmore’s exploration of liminal spaces between death and resurrection. 

In Cihuamichi, the artist embodies La Llorona, the sorrowful figure from Mexican folklore, reimagining her as a symbol of grief, resistance, and survival. Rather than a monstrous figure, La Llorona becomes a maternal force, whose actions are framed as merciful, a response to the violence and trauma of conquest. Drawing on themes of maternal sacrifice and the regenerative power of destruction, the artist connects La Llorona's narrative to the sacred and transformative nature of grief, likening it to the way the Axolotl, a creature associated with death and regeneration, resists categorization and domination. The piece critiques the colonial gaze, exploring how women's bodies have been both violated and revered, and it challenges Western notions of containment and control by asserting a powerful, uncontainable presence that is capable of transformation and resistance. 

In Tonantzin, themes of sacred energy, embodiment, and the cyclical nature of life and death through a blending of Aztec spiritual practices and the visions are informed by Smith's own life. At its core is the concept of Tonanztin—the divine Mother Earth, represented by figures like Coatlicue, Citlalicue, and Chalchiutlicue, who embody the life-giving forces of the planet. Drawing from ancestral prayer technologies, the project also delves into the role of the Teixpitla—those who "wear the flayed face" of the gods, embodying divine forces through masks that symbolize the deep, interconnected energy of Teotl (the Great Mystery). The artist returns to the apparition of the Virgen de Guadalupe, who appeared to Juan Diego as a young Indigenous woman, clothed in stars and accompanied by a snake—an emblem of life, death, and rebirth. As humanity faces environmental collapse and spiritual disconnection, this work reflects on the Virgen’s continued appearances and her message: while she will guide life into the next world, it will be irrevocably transformed. The project invites viewers to confront the urgency of these cycles and their own relationship to the Earth. 

Science fiction and Aztec cosmology meet in Toci to tell the story of a group of indigenous women who escape the 1492 Spanish conquest of the Americas in a pyramid-vessel, or Teocalli, that brings them to Mars. Harnessing the postmodern dialect of Historical Fabrication and Indigenous Futurism, Alicia Smith weaves together science fiction and Aztec cosmology to tell the story of a group of indigenous women who escape the 1492 Spanish conquest of the Americas in a pyramid-vessel or Teocalli that brings them to Mars. Utilizing a combination of costuming, ritual objects, and performance, Toci - Chapter 1: The Bat Women invites viewers to imagine an alternate reality where sacred indigenous knowledge and practices are fully intact and remain centered in society. 

Audience note that some video work contains brief imagery of gore. Mature audiences recommended.