Amalia Mondragón is a queer two-spirit, Latin Grammy-nominated, transfronteriz, singer/songwriter from the Chihuahuan desert borderlands in El Paso, Texas, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and La Union, New Mexico. Amalia’s formative musical experience includes singing, songwriting, clarinet, and trumpet.

In 2020, she was awarded the Border Narrative Change Grant, funded by NALAC and the FORD FOUNDATION. She is currently in the final stages of completing her work entitled “Transfronteriz.” It is a concept album that seeks to amplify the unique life of the transfronteriz — people who transit and navigate the U.S.-Mexico border as a way of life — through the lens of two-spirit: Tereso Perfecto Contreras / Amalia Mondragón. The album includes original compositions inspired by various genres that Tereso / Amalia grew up listening to as a transfronteriz. It is a mixtape experience for the modern playlist age, creating intimate connection and community through lyrics, language, music, and emotional soundscapes that evoke the trans-border experience. Amalia Mondragón / Tereso Perfecto Contreras hopes to spark conversations and shift narratives around gender fluidity, xenophobia, border life, migration, the Chihuahua desert, and underrepresented narratives through this project.

She partook in “Live in America” in 2022 as Co-producer of “El Puente,” a production depicting fragments of life on the border through various performance art practices.

She was most recently a recipient of the Chihuahuan Desert Cultural Fellowship and is currently a Borderlands region artist fellow with Artists At Work, where she has been working on writing new music centered around the Chihuahuan Desert.