SF/Arts Curator Insight

In one of Sean Guerra's brightly colored graphic illustrations, a figure in an elaborate head dress appears to speak a flower into existence, illustrating the power of myth to evoke the past and conjure the future. Similar vivid red and blue patterns adorn Rusby Marisol Tum Xinico's intricate weavings, which remind us of patterns and practices passed hand to hand over millennia. Polaris Castillo's mixed media collage of skeletons caught in a lovers' embrace has the pink purple tinge of hallucination, while Alvaro Tzaj Yotz's oil on canvas juxtaposition of a smiling woman with a rattle snake feels like it has emerged directly from a dream. Perhaps the birds once embroidered on her white blouse have come to life, now free to fly out of her chest and into the beyond. Conceived as a ritualistic journey, this exhibition is full of the fantastic, combining Indigenous art practice with imaginative storytelling to summon change for the self, the community, and the culture.