Photo by Christopher Archer
I was born and raised in the California San Joaquin Valley, and my family's diasporic story is entangled across the Americas, through Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, and the US.
I recently received my BA in Geography + BS in Conservation & Resource Studies from UC Berkeley and am a 2026-2027 Audio Academy fellow with KALW 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area. Through my work, I seek to uplift place-based and environmental stories, engage visual and sonic aesthetics, and honor the everyday.
As an artist, my creative practice spans sound, photo, film, collage, and zine-making. Recent audiovisual projects include por vida // for life, a documentary research experiment centering rural Latinx geographies and ecologies. I directed and produced my first short film INTERLOCUTORS in 2024, which screened at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) as part of the Eisner Prize in video and film.
I am also shaped by my time in community education and student organizing. Believing in the power of innovative storytelling strategies for the environmental justice movement, I edited numerous creative publications with the Students of Color Environmental Collective and founded the Art & Storytelling position at the UC Berkeley Student Environmental Resource Center (SERC).
I am currently based in Berkeley, CA.
You can find my CV here.
contact: jacqueline.cancholam@gmail.com