An approach to a myth of the Mixe people

10/11/2022 - 11:13 h

The artist Mariana Botey is bringing a project that takes a new perspective on the history and current formation of global art to MACBA.

Can we humans really return, or is the return always a new journey to a different place and time? This is one of the questions raised in the exhibition Ayuujkjä’äy ëy konk. A fable based on a Mixe myth that will open at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) on 10 November (inaugural event on the afternoon of the previous day). The author of the project, the art historian, artist, curator and critic Mariana Botey, starts from the myth of Kondoy of the Mixe people to confront, through the notion of indigenous from a critical revision, a new perspective on the history and current formation of global art.

In collaboration with Dr LakraTaka Fernández and Brian Cross, Botey’s project approaches the Mixe people through documentary, bibliographic and iconographic research, fieldwork and interviews. The Mixe, linguistically the closest relatives and natural heirs of the so-called Olmec, the Mesoamerican mother culture, are a never-conquered people, and in the stories they tell and the rites they perform there is content, encrypted, a world to which no one can ever return. Only the hero can do it. The team’s analysis and reflection on the basis of all the materials collected brought them closer to the basic structure of the myth and its social, territorial, political, spatial and landscape implications, an approach that they now want to share with those who visit the MACBA exhibition and see their film essay. The exhibition has been curated by Pablo Arredondo Vera, and is a production of Hacer Noche – Promised Land, in collaboration with MACBA and with the participation of the University of California, San Diego and the Casa de la Cultura Oaxaqueña.

Check this link for more information.