In Tlilli in Tlapalli: to whom does the past belong?
The lecture will focus on the recently open exhibition at the Museo Amparo in Puebla In Tlilli in Tlapalli, an interdisciplinary project by artist Mariana Castillo Deball and researcher Diana Magaloni, where Magaloni’s research on the materiality and the meaning of the colors with which the Florentine codex was painted takes a new physical reality. The museography created by Castillo Deball aims to create a narrative through colonial documents, including a sculptural constellation, a series of murals, and in collaboration with Tatiana Falcón a garden of plants and minerals used for the production of pigments and natural dyes based on the Nahua painting treaty in the Florentine Codex.
The exhibition gathers colonial codices from the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (National Library of Anthropology and History) and map-paintings from the Archivo General de la Nación (General Archive of the Nation), together with a facsimile of the Florentine Codex housed at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, Italy. Together, the exhibition examines the indigenous point of view on the conquest and the processes of survival, negotiation, and creation of a New Land. Our historic indigenous documents are stored in national and foreign archives and libraries and are very difficult to access. That is why they are presented here in various formats, in order to materialize the question: to whom does the past belong? In this way, printed historical copies and projected facsimile reproductions made especially for the exhibition, along with original map-paintings are displayed.
Mariana Castillo Deball (b. 1975, Mexico City, Mexico) explores the role objects have in our understanding of identity and history in her sculptures, drawings and editorial projects.
She takes a kaleidoscopic approach to her practice, drawing trajectories between archaeology, anthropology and science through research and collaboration, creating works that arise from the collision of these different languages.
Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at the Amparo Museum, Puebla, Mexico (2018), SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah Georgia, USA (2018), Galerie Wedding, Berlin, Germany (2017), San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, USA (2016), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, Mexico (2015), Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (2014); CCA, Glasgow, UK (2013); Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK (2013); Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City, Mexico (2011); and Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, USA (2010). Group exhibitions include the 8th Berlin Biennale, Berlin, Germany (2014); Documenta 13, Kassel, Germany (2013); and 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, Germany (2011).
Mariana Castillo Deball earned an MA in Fine Art from the UNAM, Mexico City. In 2003, she completed a postgraduate program at the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Deball was awarded the Prix de Rome, Amsterdam (2004), Zurich Art Prize (2012), Henry Moore Fellowship (2012), and Preis der Nationalgalerie für Junge Kunst, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2013). She completed a DAAD residency in Berlin in 2011.
Castillo Deball is professor at the Münster Art Academy in Germany, and currently a Tinker Visiting Professor at the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Chicago. Her solo exhibition Petlacoatl will be on view from November 16, 2018—January 13, 2019 at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts in Chicago.