Artists’ book – TLACUILA VISIONS: Apparitions & Transformations

About the book
TLACUILA VISIONS: Apparitions & Transformations presents a visual conversation between two Xicana artists, Yreina D. Cervántez and Celia Herrera Rodríguez, curated by editor Laura E. Pérez. In this limited-edition artists’ book, paintings and prints accompany writings by each artist.

Part of the historic Xicana feminist generation that arose in the late 1960s, their artwork seeks to remember and honor ancestral Indigenous ways of looking at the world that center an understanding of all life forms as spiritually connected, interdependent, and of equal worth.

The title references the social role of the Mexica tlacuiloque, the learned painters of “the red and the black inks,” and has shaped their artistic sensibilities, guiding viewers toward in ixtli in yollotl, toward the good hearts and faces of persons of integrity.

About the Chicana Legacy Codices
TLACUILA VISIONS is the third in Chicana Legacy Codices, a series of artists’ books whose accordion form recalls the amoxtli codices of the Mexica (“Aztec”) and Maya before colonization. These limited-edition books reproduce installations, paintings, and prints by artists whose legacies reach deeply into our communities, enhance collective memory, create new awareness, and contribute to a greater understanding of the rich cultural diversity of the U.S.

Read more here.

From the CHICANX/LATINX SERIES Artists’ Books
These works of contemporary Chicanx/Latinx artists and writers in translation explores the intersection of cultures, disciplines, and book structures. Each book is the result of a close collaboration with the book artist, Felicia Rice.