Leah Mata Fragua is a yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash interdisciplinary artist and educator. Her work moves across sculpture, installation, handmade paper, basketry, stone, shell, sound, and place-based materials. Her practice is shaped by California Indian material knowledge, women’s labor, environmental change, and the ways access to materials changes over time.

Much of Mata Fragua’s work begins with the material itself. She works with plant fibers, basketmaking scraps, shell, stone, natural pigments, and handmade paper, often developing new materials and processes in response to changes in access to traditional materials. Following the collapse of abalone access along the California coast, handmade paper became an increasingly important sculptural material in her practice. Her work moves between temporary and permanent forms while considering gathering, trade, ecological change, and relationships to place.

Mata Fragua’s work is held in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Denver Art Museum, the Hood Museum of Art, the Autry Museum of the American West, and the Tia Collection. Her work has been exhibited at the Fowler Museum at UCLA and other institutions nationally.

She has participated in fellowships, residencies, and programs with the School for Advanced Research, First Peoples Fund, the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, and the National Museum of the American Indian. Mata Fragua also teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts.