Does it make sense to continue considering Mesoamerica to be a territory of shared codes? At a time in which Mexico makes its immigration policies toward Central America harsher, what types of interactions can art imagine through the experiences of its Indigenous peoples? The second panel of “Unlearning the Modern” facilitates a dialogue on the work processes of four artists from Mexico and Guatemala who boldly reinterpret the textile, pictorial and sculptural traditions of their places of origin in order to transform them into new points of artistic enunciation. These transformations thus acquire political memories that cast doubts upon the administrative divisions of states, which have traditionally been coupled with a series of aesthetic categories.
(Michoacán, Mexico, 1985)
She has held individual exhibitions at the Centro Cultural La Ibérica (2022), Mérida, Yucatán and Solo Show Zurich at arteBA (2019), Buenos Aires, Argentina. Collectively, her work has been shown at the Laboratorio de Arte Alameda (2021-2022) in Mexico City, the Fundación Casa de México en España (2022), A Tale of a Tub (2021) in Rotterdam, the Servais Family Collection (2002) in Brussels, La Déesse Verte (2019) in Lille and at ARCOmadrid (2019).With Noé Martínez, she exhibited Tepalcates de sueños (2022), an Offsite project of the Swiss Institute New York in Mexico City, at the Venice International Performance Art Week in Venice and codirected La Palabra de la Cueva, winner of the Ojo and Alva Brothers Award in 2017. Her work forms part of the LACMA collections (United States).
Remembering Forgetfulness, A Confidence
It’s true that I have two or three heads, four eyes, weak blood, several of my chulel missing and a palé constantly speaking to me. It’s true that I am a mixture of mixtures that mixed together and I am constituted by multiplicity making me unstable and disposable. I bear the vacancies of my personal history that were filled with the violence of the History of my Land. I bear violence in my body: woman and the violence of knowledge denied or prohibited. It’s true that I read so that my body would remember and my head would heal. I read tonal, mintzita, rimuka, chulel, to find myself and then I picked up the pieces of myself and I found myself in the reconstruction of archaeological pieces that are silent to implanted logic, speaking to my sentiment-thought. I found myself in the admiration of those who follow the path of Arewá. I found myself in the footprints of my grandparents in the mountains and lakes of Michoacán. I found myself in my hands that knew things, speaking with the earth and the heart of the cornstalk. I constantly educate myself about what they have denied to me, I educate myself about what they have taken from me. It’s true that I grew up in a blindness programmed 500 years back, in a grid of normalized violence that has sickened me and sickens us all by dictating a path of fear, subjugation, exploitation, resignation and despair. But from the region of the dead and the dreams of the body we move toward paths of healing, reconstruction and the memory of what has been forgotten.
(Chixot/San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala, 1987)
Edgar Calel explores the complexities around the Indigenous experience through the cosmovision, rituals, community practices and beliefs of the Maya Kaqchiquel people, in opposition to the systematic racism and exclusion experienced by the Indigenous population of Guatemala. In 2021, he held his first individual exhibition, Pa ru tun che ́ (“In the Canopies”), at Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala City (2021); he has also participated in numerous collective exhibitions, including The Crack Begins Within, XI Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2020); and Fuego continuo | Feu Continuel, National Gallery of Canada (2019). His work is held by the permanent collections of the Tate Modern in London, United Kingdom; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Spain; and the Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo (MADC) in San José, Costa Rica, among others.
Pa Qejoj: A View from Walls of Reed and Wood
Through the complexities of the Indigenous experience, seen through the cosmovision, rituals, community knowledge and beliefs of the Maya Kaqchiquel people, Pa Qejoj explores the ways in which a collective artistic practice can become a critical lever against contemporary racism and Western epistemes. This talk will review the strategies developed by the artist Édgar Calel regarding aesthetic production, ways of managing and acquiring artworks by contemporary art museums and the circulation of Indigenous knowledge in international circuits. Strongly established in the territory of Chi Xot (known in Spanish as San Juan Comalapa), Calel’s sculptures, paintings and performances speak to the full resurgence of ancestral ways of life.
(San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala, 1982)
Angélica Serech is a weaver and textile artist. She learned ancestral textile techniques and began to work with traditional huipiles from Comalapa. Her curiosity led her to explore a more personal production revolving around textile art, giving her threads life. Her experimentation has led her to break with traditions and aesthetic canons, seeking to innovate with colors and techniques that are new to the textile tradition. In Guatemala, her work has been shown at the JUANNIO auction (2020), the 22nd Paiz Art Biennial (2021), Galería Extra (2021) and La Galería Rebelde (2022). Abroad, Serech has participated in the Art Paris international art fair, represented by La Galería Rebelde, and the Art City Gallery EQUINOX Women’s Exhibition (2021) in Ventura, California.
Unlearning the Modern, Art and Indigenousness in Latin America
Textile art is a reflection of identity and historical memory, essential to cultural conservation and continuity for our peoples. This is why I base my artistic practice on a textile tradition passed down from generation to generation as a way of reaffirming my identity.Indigenous textile art possesses age-old elements, as expressed in their complex structures, representative figures, brocades and unique techniques based on a precise mathematical foundation, which is used to plan each fabric. These elements make this art unique and valuable, and so revindicating it is important for our communities.The textile art of Indigenous peoples has managed to endure in spite of Western modernity and industrialization and the constant threat of devaluation, which situates us at a critical moment in which our textile pieces are being displaced onto a space of simplification as utilitarian and decorative objects.How can we unlearn concepts and canons that channel our artistic expressions in the contemporary world? As Indigenous women with tools and connections between our environment and our ancient history, we do so through our textile arts. We remain standing throughout Latin America, as Indigenous peoples in permanent resistance and resilience.
(Dzan, Yucatán, 1990)
A promoter of Mayan language and culture, José Chi Dzul studied visual arts at the Yucatán Advanced School of the Arts. He has displayed his work at the 2022 New York Latin American Art Triennial (NYLAAT), which had the theme Abya Yala: Structural Origins. He has also carried out an artistic residency in 2022 at the Spore Initiative in Berlin. In 2020, he won the Young Mexican Painting in the UK prize, organized by the UK-Mexican Arts Society. He was awarded the Young Creators scholarship from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts in 2019-2020, among others. He founded the first contemporary art space in southern Yucatán, Ko’ox Túukul, Ko’ox Boom (Let’s Think, Let’s Paint), in 2019. He has participated in 40 collective and individual exhibitions and his works form part of public and private collections in Mexico and abroad.
Do Indigenous people exist in Latin America?
Tu t’okajo’ob u yich, tu ch’akajo’ob u k’ab, tu tóokajo’ob u chuum ba’ax k ojel, ba’ale’ma’ beeychaj u kíinsiko’ob k mootsi’…
They stole our fruit, they cut off our branches, they burned down our trunk, but they could not unearth our roots…
Popol Vuh
This presentation addresses decolonial aesthetics in order to contribute to the growing task of building something of one’s own. Building something of one’s own in the midst of a coloniality that must constantly prevent this from happening is a very important step in the process of decolonizing aesthetics and generating decolonial aesthetics.We are not Indigenous, we are contemporary Mayas. I invite you to leave the bubble of colonial thinking: We are not Indigenous peoples, we are First Nations!