The Chicana Legacy Codices is 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.
The first collaboration between Felicia Rice of Moving Parts Press and former Director Betsy Andersen of Museo Eduardo Carrillo began in 2015 when MEC launched an online exhibition, DOC/UNDOC: A project of Moving Parts Press. Three years later, in 2018, the accompanying Google Arts & Culture story, DOC/UNDOC, appeared online. By 2019, the two had conceived of another project, which over time became the Chicana Legacy Codices.
CALIFAS: The Ancestral Journey / El Viaje Ancestral unites five Central Coast Chicanx artists in a unique artists’ book, linking art and social movements of the 1960s rooted “en Califas” to the next generation of Latinx and other artists. The book grew out of the Califas Legacy Project which documents the work of Amalia Mesa-Bains, Yermo Aranda, Eduardo Carrillo, Ralph D’Oliveira, and Carmen León with videos, exhibitions, community programming, and online resources. In 2020, CALIFAS: The Ancestral Journey/El Viaje Ancestral was produced in a limited edition of one handmade artists’ book, and then reproduced in a commercially printed edition of 750 copies. Please inquire.
VENUS ENVY: Chapters I-IV documents four autobiographical installations that chronicle four chapters in the life of artist Amalia Mesa-Bains. It uses historic photographs in an accordion-fold structure to illustrate the series undertaken between 1993 and 2008. Art critic and historian Jennifer A. González writes in her introduction,”Mesa-Bains’s tableaus are neither a simple enactment of religious tradition nor a purely secular art installation, but rather a hybrid genre intended for a new Chicano/a art-identified audience able to decipher the multiple iconographic references in both a Mexican and US historical context.” In 2022, VENUS ENVY: Chapters I-IV was published in an edition of 1500 copies.
$38 /$25 student – ORDER HERE
In 2023, MEC director Betsy Andersen died suddenly, but the organization, led by founder Alison Carrillo and the new director, Nicole Rudolph, decided to continue Betsy’s work with Felicia, resulting in a new book:
TLACUILA VISIONS: Apparitions & Transformations, curated and with essays by Laura E. Pérez, presents the work of two Xicana artists, Yreina D. Cervántez and Celia Herrera Rodríguez. 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 social role of the Mexica tlacuiloque, the learned painters of “the red and the black inks,” has shaped their artistic sensibilities guiding viewers toward in ixtli in yollotl, toward the good hearts and faces of persons of integrity. In 2025, TLACUILA VISIONS was issued in an edition of 1000 copies.
$38 /$25 student – ORDER HERE
From the CHICANX/LATINX SERIES Artists’ Books
This series explores the intersection of cultures, disciplines, and book structures. These works of contemporary Chicanx/Latinx artists and writers in translation are issued in both limited and trade editions. Each book is the result of a close collaboration between writer, artist, and the book artist, Felicia Rice.