Iyapokatzin; the venerable tobacco smoke is a choreographic work that honors the history of tobacco from a Mexican perspective through Marcela Torres’ years of research and devotion to tobacco as a deity. This performance is in collaboration with Izayo Mazehualli. Mazehualli is an instructor of the Azteka-Chichimeka dance tradition and Nahua martial arts. Iyapokatzin is a Nawatl word and translates to “venerable tobacco smoke”.
Fire Drilling is a performance the was the sketch of Iyapokatzin. Fire Drilling investigates the evolution of Latin-American social dance in parallel with significant cigar production sites. This performance endeavors to create a hybrid ritual using known cultural tools of dance and cigar smoke to tell an intricate story of colonization, genocide, U.S. intervention, and continual displacement.
Xochiotia, nahuatl (Uto-Aztec language): to tinge something with the smell or color of roses, or to decorate something with flowers; to flower.
Xochiotia: At El Paseo is an outdoor adobe brick monument hosted by the El Paseo Community Garden in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. Xochiotia is based on Flower Mountain, a pre-conquest Mesoamerican afterworld focused on light, botany and rituals based on natures cycle.
Fire Drilling investigative sketch
Made while at Kohler Art/Industry residency this series of 30+ slip cast floral plates reference Mexica codices and their graphical language. They are meant as altar plates to celebrate nature-based ritual.
Installation shots for Teaching At The End of Times a project of Vox Populi and the Pew Foundation. This exhibition was Oct 2023 at Atelier Gallery in Philadelphia, PA.
I organize and imagine forms of collective learning in the shape of workshops. In the last few years I’ve focused on outdoor events at sculpture parks. Its a pleasure to invite communities to cooking on fires, consider the power of incense making and process and firing natural clays.
