Grounded #114, from the series Grounded

Aguilar was a central figure in Chicano and queer art communities in Los Angeles, and that urban environment provided the backdrop for much of her best-known work in portraiture. However, in the mid-1990s she began photographing herself nude in the landscape. Grounded #114 comes from the last series of photographs that Aguilar made before her premature death due to diabetes. Shot in Joshua Tree National Park, this work responds, in part, to historical depictions of the U.S. National Parks and the American West, which have often served to illustrate the concept of manifest destiny and to justify colonial expansion. Introducing a highly personal element to that genre, Aguilar accentuates parallels in the rounded, undulating shapes of her body and those of the rock formations around her.