mariana Aq’ab’al moscoso is a nonbinary reconnecting Indigenous queer of Achi (Maya), Nicānāhuac, and Afro-Indigenous roots, living in Vesnak near the Kum Sayo on the traditional lands of the Nisenan, Maidu, Miwok, and Pawtin peoples. They are a cultural practitioner, cultural strategist, facilitator, storyteller, digital artist, zine maker, and emerging weaver, whose work is deeply rooted in Maya cosmology, interconnection, and the power of storytelling to shape futures.

Their creative practice weaves together art, memory, and liberatory world-building, exploring the fluid relationship between time, identity, and place. Through digital illustration, embroidery, writing, and cultural strategy, they engage in storytelling as an act of remembrance, resistance, reclamation, and renewal. Their art often blends photography, ancestral motifs, and hand-drawn digital elements, creating pieces that honor Indigenous knowledge and interconnected ways of being.

mariana is a published writer and artist, with work featured in Terra:Soul, Crushing Colonialism Magazine, Mujeres de Maíz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice, and Feminist Praxis, Weaving Our Stories: Return to Belonging, and SNAG Magazine, Rise & Thrive: Self-Love & Healing Issue 11. They were also co-creator and editor of community zines and co-curated the art exhibition The Ritual of Myth Making: RECLAIM at Root Division.

As co-visionary of Toj + Tijax: The Ritual of Myth Making, mariana holds space for creative Indigenous queer healing grounded in Maya cosmology. Toj + Tijax offers 2STQBIPOC-centered ceremonies, altar-making, workshops, and healing collaborations, honoring ancestral knowledge and reciprocal care.

In their professional work, mariana serves as Senior Program Officer at California Humanities, leading equity-focused program design and grantmaking in the public humanities. They also continue to collaborate with The Center for Cultural Power as a curriculum consultant and facilitator for Culture Bearers, and in September 2025 were contracted to co-lead the Ford Foundation’s Civic Space cohort, culminating in a workshop at the Global Activism Conference in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. That same month, mariana joined Scansion as Senior Strategic Associate, contributing to people-centered design strategy that aligns people, systems, and resources to create more inclusive experiences. They have also supported the field as a grant application reader for organizations including Creative West and US Artists.

Previously, mariana served as Associate Director of Artist Leadership at The Center for Cultural Power, where they led programs uplifting culture bearers and artists at the intersection of arts and social justice. Their work included fellowship leadership, narrative strategy workshops, and funding initiatives grounded in liberatory practice. At the California Arts Council, they expanded equitable access to public arts funding, managed the Arts in Corrections program, co-developed statewide racial equity initiatives, and stewarded multimillion-dollar state arts investments.

In academic spaces, mariana’s scholarship has explored anticapitalist art, gender studies, and visual culture. Their research has been published by the University of California eScholarship platform (An(other) Marisa Merz: An Alternative Interpretation to the ‘Feminized’ Artworks of Arte Povera Artist Marisa Merz) and presented at national and international conferences, including UCLA's Thinking Gender and The Cultures of Popular Culture (Ireland).

mariana holds an MA in Art History (emphasis on Gender Studies), and dual BAs in Art History and Italian Language & Culture from the University of California, Davis.

Through Ceiba Futures, mariana weaves these threads of cultural practice, strategy, research, and ceremony to support organizations, communities, and movements in building relational, emergent, and liberated futures.

They believe in the power of spaciousness, care, and deep listening—rejecting urgency in favor of community-rooted creation. Their work is an invitation: to pause, to remember, and to imagine futures woven from the past, present, and what is still to come.