Judith L. Huacuja [wa-coo-HA] is a Chicana artist, art historian, and Professor Emerita of Latin American and Chicano Art History at the University of Dayton. Raised in the Southwest Borderlands and originally from Houston, Texas, she currently works in Ohio.

Working primarily in acrylic paint and mixed media on paper and canvas, Huacuja creates semi-abstract narrative landscapes that explore the interconnected relationships between peoples, cultures, and the environment. Her work is fundamentally anchored in the exploration of critical social, racial, and environmental issues.

Huacuja’s paintings are distinguished by intense color, expressive forms, and layered imagery that reflect her Mexican American heritage. Drawing upon Latina visual and spiritual traditions, she merges Latinx Catholic influences with Indigenous Mexican philosophies.

Huacuja's artistic practice developed in Houston during the late 1980s and early 1990s at the Commerce Street Arts Warehouse, where she created figural abstractions and landscapes responding to the environmental devastation of Houston’s ship channel and Gulf Coast region.

During the 1990s, her work at the Rusk Street Arts Studios expanded to incorporate photographic collage within acrylic paintings, establishing an approach that continues to inform her mixed-media practice.

As an arts scholar, Huacuja holds a Ph.D. in Chicano, Latino, and Latin American Art Histories from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Huacuja earned the MA in Art History from Rice University, and the BFA in Painting and BA in Art History from the University of Houston. She has published on Chicano, Latino, African American, and contemporary non-Western art. During her tenure at the University of Dayton (2000–2025), she taught and published while developing an artistic practice focused on the intersection of social justice and environmental issues.

Huacuja is an active member of numerous professional arts organizations, including the National Association of Chicano and Chicana Studies, the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, the College Art Association, the Midwest Art History Society, the African American Visual Artists Guild, and The Contemporary Dayton,

Huacuja has exhibited her artwork throughout the United States, with works held in public and private collections in Texas, California, Ohio, and beyond. “Working full-time now, as a painter, I seek to create artwork that reflects contemporary social concerns while celebrating the beauty, complexity, and shared challenges of our world.”