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Welcome to Your Art Is A Spell, the podcast that ignites inspiring and transformative conversations about art as a magical practice. I'm your host, Edgar Fabián Frías—a multi-passionate artist, witch, therapist, and proud mutant shape-shifter. My art spells have reached audiences through social media, billboards, and skyscrapers and have even been placed on the surface of the moon! Join us as we explore how reclaiming your unique artistic voice and embracing bold creativity can transform your life and the world around you. Subscribe to the podcast and sign up for our newsletter at www.yourartisaspell.com to stay connected!
Welcome or welcome back to Your Art Is A Spell.
This is season two. We are beginning this season
in an in an incredibly difficult moment in
our country, in our world. There is so much
happening all over the place. I know that many
of us are needing support, guidance, connection.
And so I've decided to come back with season two
with this powerful theme in mind. Reclaiming our
sovereignty, our agency, our power, pulling back
our energy from these systems that are trying so
hard to distract us, to make us feel powerless and
hopeless. I am here to imbue your energies, your
bodies, your ears with some hope, with some love,
with some magic, and hopefully with some fun as
we move into this season with so much happening.
I'm literally a couple of days away from traveling
to Berlin. I'm going to be doing an artist
residency called the Human Machine Residency.
I'm going to be connecting with some sacred
objects of the Wixárika community that were collected
in the 1920s. I'm also going to be traveling,
visiting different countries, connecting with
art and artists from all over the world, and I
want to bring you along with me. And today we have
something really special. I'm about to head out
to the desert to Palm Springs for an opening of an
exhibition that I feel so honored to be a part of.
I want to bring you all along on this journey. I'm
a part of an exhibition called Queer Arcana. It is
30 plus queer, trans, and gender expansive artists
who are all witchy and magical. And I feel so so
excited to be able to go on this journey with you
all to bring you all along as I go and experience
this art and connect with some of the artists who
are involved in the exhibition, the curators and
people who are there to visit the show. As always,
I really appreciate your feedback, your comments.
Please, please know I'm so so excited to bring you
all season 2 of Your Art is a Spell. There's
so much magic waiting for us in this season.
I have some incredible guests coming that I'm
going to be speaking with. I'm also working on
an exciting workshop and a book that I'm going
to be talking about in a couple of episodes. So,
stay tuned. And without further ado, here we go to
Palm Springs. Okay, we are here in Palm Springs.
It took us about 4 hours to get here yesterday.
For some reason, there was a lot of traffic
getting into the desert. I don't know why, but
it normally takes about 2 and 1/2 hours from Los
Angeles to get into Palm Springs. But yeah, it
took us a little over 4 hours, which is why I
didn't record anything yesterday. But we were
able to stop in Claremont and do like a mini
studio visit with an artist who's completing
their MFA there, which was really wonderful.
And it did break up the long trip that we had
yesterday. But oh my goodness, I am so excited
to show you all this incredible exhibition
that opened up last night at the Palm Springs
Art Museum. It was such a synchronous event. One
of the first things that happened when I arrived
last night was that I saw a professor of mine from
my undergrad that I haven't seen in a little over
20 years and ran into some wonderful friends, met
some new people. It's such such a beautiful show.
If you're listening to this, I want you to,
you know, take a moment, go onto YouTube when
you have a chance because I would love for you to
see some of the visuals of the show that I'm going
to be sharing later today. I wanted to speak on
one of the themes of this season's podcast that
I feel is really important to name, and that is
tactical magic. And what I mean by that is magic
being brought into the everyday into moments when
it is really needed. Knowing that magic is always
available to us wherever, whenever, however we
are, and that magic has so much to offer us and
that we can learn ways to really incorporate it in
quick, easy to do, sometimes overt, covert ways.
We can hide our magic. We could do our magic in
secret. We could encrypt our magic. There's so
much to talk about around this theme. I'm really
excited to delve into ways in which I practice
with tactical magic in my everyday as we witness
the rise of fascism, violence, ignorance in the
United States and abroad. It is so important
for us to remember that alongside these rising
tides of energy, there are also rising energies of
consciousness, of clarity, of connection and yes,
of witchcraft and magic as well. This is echoed
in the many ways in which witches, queer people,
trans people, those who have existed at the
margins, people of color, communities of color,
we have survived. We have smuggled our information
across time and space, across borders,
across dimensions. We will continue to do this in
this moment. And this is one of the reasons why
I'm really feeling called to center this notion
of tactical magic here in season 2. There is so
much else that I'm going to also be connecting
with throughout this season, but I want this to
be the thread that really weaves together the
conversations that we're going to be having.
And so I want as you know I'm here in my hotel in
Palm Springs getting ready to head out to go back
to the museum to bring my camera with me to show
you all the incredible history the rich vast webs
that have been brought together by the curator
David Evans Frantz of queer and trans people
from across time and space who have woven their
magic into artworks to me art is such a powerful
tactical practice and I'm excited for you to
witness these pieces through that lens. So again,
we are about to transcend and move into this
wonderful exhibition, Queer Arcana. I got a flyer
yesterday for the exhibition. This is the artist
Nao Bustamante's artwork that is featured in the show.
And without further ado, I'm excited for us to
move through this portal and jump into a queer
arcana. Art, magic, and spirit. A queer arcana.
Art, magic, and spirit. Currently on view at the
Palm Springs Art Museum through October 18th, 2026
is one of the most exciting, emotionally resonant,
and genuinely necessary exhibitions I have
encountered in a long time. And I want to walk
you through it today because I think it speaks
directly to what we explore on this podcast.
The idea that art is not merely for decoration.
It's not just something we do for fun. Art is
spellcraft. Art is a technology of the spirit. And
for queer artists across more than a century, it
has literally been a tool for survival. Organized
by David Evans Frantz, curator at large for the
museum's Q+ art initiative, this exhibition brings
together 35 artists and spans works made from 1909
all the way to 2026. Over a century of queer
engagement with the occult, with divination,
with ritual, with esoteric cosmology, David
Frantz has said that when he began researching,
he quickly discovered the historical linkages
between magic, alternative spiritualities,
and queer activism, and community building are far
more wide reaching than I had ever anticipated.
Think about that for a moment. This isn't a niche
interest. This isn't a quirky little subcategory
of our history. This is a through line where
people have been turning to hidden mystical
knowledge not as escapism but as a tactical
strategy as a form of world building when the
dominant world has refused to hold us. The Palm
Springs Art Museum is one of the only institutions
with a program specifically dedicated to telling
this story. Their Q Plus art initiative which
launched in 2023 is described as the only program
of its kind dedicated to queer art and artists
within a general museum. That is remarkable and
this exhibition is a crowning achievement of that
commitment. This exhibition is organized into six
thematic sections and each one is its own portal.
The first one's called To Kiss the Spirits.
The second one is The Deck Recast. And here we
can see some gorgeous tarot cards by our beloved
queer ancestor Rachel Pollack. And then the third
section is called Occult Knowledge and that traces
the broader esoteric lineage that runs through
queer avant guard and countercultural movements. The
fourth section is Magical Americas and this is a
section that I'm in which I feel so proud of. The
fifth section is called Sex Magic and the sixth
section is called Witches Heal which I feel like
honestly I could do an entire episode on. Beyond
these six sections, there's also an area that has
an archive called Out of Your Broom Closets. And
this displays magazines and newsletters and books
like Women's Spirit and writings by Wiccan priests
and activists Dr. Leo Louis Martello. Wow. Yeah. I
just want to pause here for a second to talk about
why I think this exhibition is so significant, not
just as an art show, but as a cultural and even
therapeutic gesture. There's something so profound
about the fact that across more than a century,
queer people have independently, repeatedly turn
to the same tools. Divination, ritual, sigil,
cosmology, altered states, sacred eroticism. These
are not trends. These are responses to a shared
condition. The condition of being told that your
way of being does not fit in within the dominant
spiritual frameworks of your time. And I just want
to pause here and invite you, if you're watching
this on YouTube, to take a look here at these
people watching my video. It was just so moving
for me to have my social practice project, Give Us
Home Spider, included in this exhibition. This was
a very personal art project for me. I organized
a ritual near a cement quarry that is close to my
parents' home. I invited 13 witches and healers to
join me and we intuitively created a ceremony on
this land. We did not ask for permission. It was
not choreographed. It was very emergent. And as
you can see, it's super colorful, very playful,
very magical. And I feel so honored for this
project from 2017 to have been included in this
incredible survey show. I really want to invite
you to come and see this exhibition and to really
take it in in person. It's definitely something to
see here or if you're watching online or hearing
it on this podcast. I really want to invite you to
connect with this exhibition. When I think about
us as queer people, you know, when the church has
rejected us or when our families have rejected
us, when the law has rejected us, when, you know,
we feel rejected as a society, we turn to other
things. We turn to each other, we find the tarot,
we find the stars, we connect with herbs and with
circles and chants and sigils. And I feel like
what this exhibition really argues beautifully
and rigorously is that for queer artists, this was
never just a personal practice. It's always been
political. It's been about world making and world
building. For us, again, it's about survival.
Our lives have depended on these practices. And
as someone who works at the intersection of
art, healing, and spirituality, I feel this
in my bones. Art that reaches towards the unseen
is not naive or escapist. It is visionary. It is
necessary. It is how we remember that the world
can be otherwise. And I love the work by Candice
Lin that's been included in this show. And this
is artwork by Hilma's Ghost who are artists that
I was fortunate enough to meet in New York. I'm
also going to be in an exhibition coming up later
this year with them. Their work is so beautiful.
It is channeled. It is divinatory. It is definitely
art that helps you enter into a trance. And they
not only shared this gorgeous painting, but also
these banners that they created. I gasped audibly
when I first saw these banners when I walked into
the room because they were so powerful and held
such a sacred presence in the space. There was
such a feeling of honoring our queer lineages,
our queer ancestors. You could also really feel
it in this artwork by Tee Corinne. It is so beautiful
and really connects us with the body and with
the psychedelic. And I was really really smitten
by these paintings by the artist Clarity Haynes
This one is an altar to Laura Aguilar who as you may
or may not know has been a big influence on my
practice. These paintings are really gorgeous and
they speak to altar building ways that we venerate
and connect with spirituality in different
settings. how we set up our homes or other
spaces we inhabit. There was also work by Agnes
Pelton who was such a visionary transcendental
painter. There are so many incredible people in
this exhibition including the amazing performance
and video artist Nao Bustamante who created this piece in
honor of our late queer ancestor Walter Mercado. If you grew
up as a Latinx person in the 80s and 90s, Walter
was always sharing astrological insights to our
communities. And this is a beautiful sculptural
piece by Nancy Azara. And Genesis P-Orridge,
there were two works by them in this exhibition
that were so moving to me. Genesis is someone
who I've really respected and have been so
moved to be included in an exhibition with
our beloved ancestor Genesis. And here is some
gorgeous, gorgeous work by Elijah Burgher. Again,
it is such an honor for me honestly personally
to be in an exhibition with these artists. I just
really want to acknowledge something about the
place that we're in. You know, Palm Springs has a
long rich history as a being a sanctuary for LGBTQ
plus people, a desert place where queer community
has found warmth, beauty, and freedom. And there's
just something so cosmologically appropriate about
this exhibition being held here. The desert is a
place of vision, a place where the veil is thin
and where mystics have gone to receive. The Q Plus
Art Initiative at Palm Springs Art Museum is doing
something remarkable. They are insisting that
queer art histories are not supplemental to art
history. They ARE art history. This exhibition
is supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation
for the Visual Arts and the Trellis Art Fund,
among others, which signals real institutional
investment in this work. If you're anywhere near
Southern California before October 18, 2026,
I am telling you, go and see this exhibition.
Bring your tarot deck with you. Bring a friend.
Go with your questions. Come with your grief,
with your joy, with your curiosity. And if you
can't go in person, sit with the names in
this exhibition. Look up Rachel Pollack,
who left us in 2023 and whose rich legacy is
honored here. Look up Devan Shimoyama and let
those rhinestones catch the light in your mind.
Look up Austin Osman Spare and think about what
it meant for a queer man in 1913 to encode his
desires into sacred symbols. Art is a spell and
this exhibition is proof that the spell has been
cast across generations, across borders, across
every attempt to silence us. It was passed down
in paint and glitter and ritual and community.
And now it is here on the walls of a museum in the
California desert asking you to receive it. Thank
you so much for being here with me today on Your
Art is a spell. And if this episode moved you,
please share it with a friend, leave a review,
and tell a fellow magic maker about it.
Until next time, your art is a spell and it will
change your life and the world around us. Bye.