DIRECTOR

Carmina Escobar is a radical vocalist, improviser, sound and intermedia artist, film director, and creative producer from Mexico City, based in Los Angeles. Working through the body and the extremes of the voice, she creates performances, installations, films, and sonic encounters charged with intimacy, friction, and desire. Her practice engages migration, queerness, ritual, and belonging, opening unfamiliar ways of sensing, listening, and being together.

As Director of Boss Witch Productions, Escobar conceives projects and builds the artistic collaborations and production structures that bring them to life. Her experience producing large-scale interdisciplinary work predates Boss Witch, with projects including Pura Entraña and Fuentes. She helped develop Boss Witch’s commissioning program, combining artist fees and material support with production, documentation, and mentorship, and conceived and helped develop the MOONBLOOD Fellowship, connecting established artists with artist fellows for logistical support and exchange across generations.

Through Boss Witch, her own artistic practice meets collaborative creation and production. She conceived AL SUR DE LA FRONTERA, shaped its artistic program alongside Mads Falcone, and contributed original pieces, bringing Oaxacan musical traditions and experimental practices together through a collective process. Bajo la Sombra del Sol, her original work as creator, writer, and film director, brings together an extensive team of artists and collaborators. Other projects include Ripples and Nature and Art as Medicine, developed with artist Jaime Scholnick around voice, listening, and healing. With longtime collaborator Ron Athey, she conceived and developed Vox Clamantis and now leads Boss Witch’s creative production for the international premiere of his ASCLEPEION.

Escobar co-founded LIMINAR in 2011 and served as co-director alongside Alexander Bruck until 2021, shaping its artistic direction and independently producing contemporary and experimental music projects. She also co-founded HOWL SPACE, a platform for radical vocal exploration and learning. Over thirteen years teaching at California Institute of the Arts, she has developed courses and mentored artists in experimental voice, improvisation, and interdisciplinary practice.

From 2017 to 2026, she was a member of BETALEVEL, the now-closed artist-run collective and subterranean space in Los Angeles’s Chinatown devoted to social experimentation and hands-on culture. Her programming, performance, and production work there brought artists and audiences together across experimental music, sound, film, and live art. This grounding in DIY and underground arts communities informs her artist-led approach to Boss Witch.

She received the 2026 Creative Capital Award and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ 2020 Grants to Artists award in Music/Sound, with additional support from National Performance Network, New Music USA, NALAC, and USArtists International. Her residencies include MacDowell, Bemis Center, STEIM, Omi: Music, Montalvo Arts Center, and the Chinati Foundation. Across performance, production, and teaching, she creates space for artistic risk, sustained collaboration, and new possibilities for the voice.