Esteban Cabeza de Baca: Ancestral Dreams

MoMA PS1’s entrance features a new mural by Queens-based artist Esteban Cabeza de Baca (b. 1985, San Diego), now on view through spring 2027. The mural, titled Ancestral Dreams (2026), weaves together Mesoamerican iconography, labor histories, and speculative futures, envisioning, for the artist, a dimension where advocacy for migrant communities is inseparable from the protection of the land. Cabeza de Baca’s work marks the second MoMA PS1 Plaza Mural, an annual commission juried by local cultural leaders, including curators, organizers, and artists. This year’s jury included Kaitlin García-Maestas (independent curator); José Esparza Chong Cuy (Executive Director and Chief Curator, Storefront for Art and Architecture); and Jaclyn Reyes (artist and co-founder, Little Manila Queens Bayanihan Arts).

Ancestral Dreams draws from syncretic iconography of resistance, faith, and survival. Black eagles connote the ongoing United Farm Workers movement. Prayer hands entwined with a rosary reflect tenets of Liberation Theology, which originated in Latin America in the late 1960s and drew from Marxist thought to address poverty and other forms of oppression. Cabeza de Baca interweaves these images with environmental abstractions and Mesoamerican symbology, such as a blue headdress referencing the Blue Corn God of Tenochtitlan and Maya stelae, and the “Three Sisters” (corn, beans and squash), deities of sustenance central to Indigenous cultures across the Americas.

This commission is organized by Elena Ketelsen González, Associate Curator.