TLACUILA VISIONS: Apparitions & Transformations
Artwork by Yreina D. Cervántez and Celia Herrera Rodríguez
Bookwork by Felicia Rice
Essays by Laura E. Pérez
Edition of 1000, of which 300 books have been donated to libraries and public institutions across California
7.75 x 7.75 inches (accordion extends to 9.5 feet)
$38 /$25 student
Published in collaboration with Museo Eduardo Carrillo. More information at Museo’s site here.
Celebrate with us! Join us in person to meet the artists and connect with the Latinx/Xicanx community! Details here…
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.
For a deeper look, visit the Museo Eduardo Carrillo’s online exhibition below on Google Arts & Culture, an online platform that makes artworks and cultural treasures from around the world accessible to everyone. Or visit Google Arts & Culture online here.
Collaborators
Artist Yreina D. Cervántez writes: “As a child of the 50’s and 60’s growing up in southwest Kansas and rural Southern California, I witnessed injustices and had experiences I did not have words for which became the impetus for a lifelong dedication to social justice. Eventually, my path led me to study art, becoming the first university graduate in my family. My art reflects more than fifty years of exploration working in diverse media, and is informed by Native Mesoamerican spirituality/cosmology, Mexican art traditions, Chicanx/Latinx poetics, and a Xicana-Indigena feminist thought and perspective. Expressed are issues of environmental justice, human rights, and themes of the Sacred; specifically in regards to Xicana/Latina agency and the decolonized feminine body as contested space and site of transformation. A complex layering of symbolism and text from many sources characterize the compositions in my artwork, creating a hybrid language of contemporary glyphs and a rich visual narrative.” Cervántez is Professor Emerita, Department of Chicana/o Studies, California State University Northridge.
Social and Public Arts Resource Center (SPARC): Iconic LA mural SAVED: “La Ofrenda” by Yreina Cervantez Returns
Artist Celia Herrera Rodríguez, Xicana queer visual artist/educator, whose practice reflects a multi-generational dialogue and engagement with Xicana[x] Indigenous Mexican and North American art, thought, spirituality, culture, and politics. She is co-founder and co-director of Las Maestras Center for Xicana Indigenous Thought and Art Praxis and is a Teaching Professor of Xicana Art Praxis in the Department of Chicana/o/x Studies at UCSB. In recent years, her work has been exhibited nationally, including the Oakland Museum of California Art; the Cheech Marin Center of Chicano Art and Culture, Riverside, CA; the Phoenix Art Museum, AZ; and the Perez Art Museum, Miami, FL.
celiahrodriguez.com
celiahrodriguez.turnpiece.net/
Las Maestras Center https://www.lasmaestrascenter.ucsb.edu/
Curator and editor Laura Elisa Pérez is the author of Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities (Duke University Press 2007); Eros Ideologies: Writings on Art, Spirituality, and the Decolonial (Duke University Press 2019); Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Art, Weaving, Vision (Duke University Press 2022), co-edited with Ann Marie Leimer; and the exhibition catalog with critical essays, Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory (University of California Press and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive 2023), co-edited with María Esther Fernández. She is Professor in Chicanx, Latinx, and Ethnic Studies and Chair of the Latinx Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her PhD at Harvard University and a BA/MA Joint Degree at The University of Chicago.
UCB Faculty page: https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/laura-perez
NY Museum of Modern Art Magazine interview: “Laura E. Pérez on Altars, Eroticism, and the ‘Mundane Sacred'”
Book artist and publisher Felicia Rice is a native Californian rarely found far from the coast. In 1977, she founded Moving Parts Press, creating books, broadsides, and prints in close collaboration with visual and performing artists, writers, and philosophers. She has collaborated with Museo Eduardo Carrillo on several projects, including the online exhibition of DOC/UNDOC and the Chicana Legacy Codices. movingpartspress.com
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.
Co-publishers
Museo Eduardo Carrillo was founded in 2001 to extend the artist’s work and legacy into the world. It is the only artist-endowed foundation in the US to represent a Mexican American artist. Museo ensures that Carrillo’s legacy is perpetuated through scholarships, films, exhibitions, publications, and a web presence that includes online exhibitions of underrepresented artists and free curriculum based on contemporary Latinx art. www.museoeduardocarrillo.org
Moving Parts Press is a letterpress print studio and electronic publishing company that creates and publishes limited-edition artists’ books, broadsides, and prints. Artist Felicia Rice has collaborated with artists and writers under the Moving Parts Press imprint since 1977, with a focus on the Chicano/a/x Art Movement and issues of social and environmental justice. Her work has been exhibited from Tokyo and Mexico City to New York, and is held in library and museum collections worldwide. www.movingpartspress.com
Details
Edition of 1000, of which 250 books have been donated to libraries across California
7.75 x 7.75 inches (accordion extends to 9.5 feet)
$38
$25 student please inquire here
To order, please visit the MPP Bookshop.
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.