Frida Larios is a typo-graphic artist from El Salvador (of mixed Indigenous ancestry). She holds a Bachelors of Arts from University College Falmouth in Cornwall, England, and a Masters of Arts in Communication Design from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, University of the Arts London, England. While in London, the former Central American beach volleyball gold medallist taught at the London College of Fashion and Camberwell College of Arts. She is currently an Adjunct Professorial Lecturer in Visual Literacy and Design Foundations at American University (SOC) and University of the District of Columbia (CAS).

New Maya Language is a living workshop led by guardians and Frida Larios, facilitating Indigenous graphic language through intercultural: books, letter-forms, icons, textiles, stones, walls, trees, immersing and emerging from cosmovision, collective well-being and trans-generational community. To bridge this ancestral to contemporary visual symbology, Larios has spent 15 years on a journey of uncovering layers of own family racism, and practicing the regeneration of her blood memory through two series of picto-glyphs (pictograms + hieroglyphics), titled: New Maya Language and Animales Interiores.These collections are based on the logographic principles of ancestral Maya and Pipil hieroglyphics, ceramic objects and oral history, weaving-in: tribal, academic, experiential and place-based, Indigenous-led knowledge.

Larios was commissioned by the El Salvador Olympic Committee to art direct the #TeamESA (El Salvador team) delegation uniforms for the Panam Games in Lima, 2019: guided by Iniciativa Portadores del Náhuat elders and a trans-disciplinary team, which included linguists, archaeologists and artisans. Before, Larios had co-designed the El Salvador delegation (TeamESA) uniforms for the Toronto 2015, PanAm Games inauguration ceremony. The Toronto 2015, PanAm Games uniforms were cited among the top 10 by The Star, Canada.

Larios’s collaborative art and design installations’ have been temporarily exhibited in collaboration with the Smithsonian Latino Center in Washington, DC, (mostly in celebration of Day of the Dead) at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (Molina Family Latino Gallery), the Peale Center, Baltimore, and UNIDOS; as well as the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center; Club de Regatas Gallery and Universidad Ricardo Palma in Lima, Perú; Embassy of El Salvador in London; La Sorbonne University (with the Nature of Cities) and the Embassy of El Salvador in Paris; Embassy of Mexico's Cultural Center in Guatemala; Museo para la Identidad Nacional in Tegucigalpa; Museo de Arte de El Salvador [MARTE]. And collectively at the And collectively at the American University Museum in Washington, DC; Dongdaemun Design Park in Seoul (selection of 20, only Latin American), the University of Pretoria in South Africa (Mandela Poster Project selection of 95, National Taiwan University of the Arts in Taipei (International Indigenous Design Network, Mother Tongue selection), the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum in Beijing (selection of 80, only Latin American); among others.

In 2013, Joya de Cerén archaeological site in El Salvador observed 20 years of having earned the UNESCO World Heritage Site seal. To celebrate this national achievement Larios was commissioned to co-install a New Maya Language picto-glyphs painted narrative on the "Pompeii of the Americas" (the site's nickname) Museum surface. In 2019, the third edition of Larios's children’s book:The Community Buried by an Erupting Volcano was published with guidance of Iniciativa Portadores del Náhuat and Central de Organizaciones Indígenas Campesinas Ch’orti’ Nuevo Día, with a foreword by Payson Sheets, PhD, principal researcher of Joya de Cerén of UC Boulder.

Larios’s collaborative works and texts have been featured in The Guardian US, Telemundo Washington DC, Smithsonian Magazine (Online), BBC2, BBC Radio 4, Getty Images, Agence France-Presse (AFP, London), Copa Airlines TV, PRINT Magazine, The Daily Telegraph, ElFaro.net, Courrier International, TASCHEN, Thames & Hudson, among others.

Download Larios’ CV here