Unfolding Visions of Contemporary Mayan Art

The Aluna Art Foundation is hosting a lecture by Dr. Adriana Herrera explaining current contemporary art created by Mayan artists from Guatemala. The title of the exhibition, “Tiempo Circular” (Circular Time), pays homage to this ancient culture of astronomers and to its prodigious textiles that-unlike the great architectural monuments that ceased to be built-have continued to incessantly weave millenary traditions and knowledge. Neither wars nor the oppression of the conquest prevented the transmission of this knowledge maintained by women. Two contemporary Maya Tz’utujil artists, Manuel Chavajay and Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín, learned from them. They use textiles, among other means, to move from the system of their ancestral culture to that of the international art scene, without uprooting themselves from it. The primary colors in contemporary Western culture are associated with constructivism, and are for these artists the states of corn and cardinal points. At the same time, the exhibition displays the inquiries of tepeu choc, a Mayan artist descendant of the Q´eqchi´and Kaqchikel peoples. Departing from the line ?similar to a thread? he builds a language in the form of an expanded textile art that transits from drawing to sculpture. Like the ancient Mayans who calculated with surprising precision the cyclical movement of planets, he uses mathematics to structure his works of art.

Dr. Adriana Herrera is a curator and independent art critic who has been researching fiber arts from Argentina to Canada. She curated “America Weaves” at Coral Gables Museum in 2018 and previously she curated, as part of Aluna Curatorial Collective, the project Women Weavers at Ideobox, Miami. Currently, she is working on a book dedicated to textile art in Latin America with an emphasis on the influence of indigenous legacies and the existence of a powerful current of contemporary art created by artists who are of indigenous descent.

This program is free to attend. The gallery is located in front of a free big parking lot within a commercial center.

The exhibition and related programming are funded in part through a Florida Humanities Community Project Grant in partnership with the Aluna Art Foundation.