In collaboration with researcher Diana Magaloni the exhibition presents an interpretation/intervention on the origins of our history, where the experience of the indigenous peoples interprets and recreates the moment of the conquest and the transformation of the earth to create a new cultural reality that still marks our way of being and seeing the world.

The exhibition gathers colonial codices from the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia (National Library of Anthropology and History) and map-paintings from the Archivo General de la Nación (General Archive of the Nation), together with the encyclopedic project known as the Florentine Codex housed in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, in Florence, Italy. Together, the documents examine the indigenous point of view on the conquest and the processes of survival, negotiation, and creation of a New Land.

Our historic indigenous documents are stored in national and foreign archives and libraries and are very difficult to access. That is why they are presented here in various formats, in order to materialize the question: to whom does the past belong? In this way, printed historical copies and projected facsimile reproductions made especially for the exhibition, along with original map-paintings are displayed.

The chemical study of the colors in the Florentine Codex has a relevant role in the exhibition. During her research, Magaloni analyzed and recreated the color palette used in the Codex, verifying that the colors are not just elements used to paint documents. Their composition and origin define the meaning of the images.

Through the materiality of color, Magaloni refers to the images in relation to the Nahua concept of ixiptla (substitute, representative, image). The ixiptla concept derives from the particle -xip: skin or cover since it is the covering that gives identity and physical reality to the essences. That is why Magaloni considers pigments as the skin of images; the colors make them recognizable and powerful presences and not mere representations. Hence, the paintings of the codices and maps were a manner of repainting/making the world emerge after the conquest.

From Magaloni’s research, surges a sculptural constellation, a series of murals, and in collaboration with Tatiana Falcón the transformation of the Museum Colonial Patio into a garden of plants and minerals used for the production of pigments and natural dyes based on the Nahua painting treaty in the Florentine Codex. The arrangement of the garden has as reference the structure of space and time according to the indigenous vision depicted in the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer.

In collaboration with Diana Magaloni and Tatiana Falcón

The Olmec artists who painted the caves in Oxtotitlán, Guerrero towards 1520 BC, had already discover a manufacturing technique of mineral pigments for red, yellow, blue, black, and white, mixed with a binding medium. Since then, being a painter, tlacuilo in Nahuatl, involved the creation of different colors. The Nahuatl concept to describe “knowledge” is in tlilli, in tlapalli, “the black ink, the colors,” metaphor that describes the action of painting and painting itself: its black contours and its colorful surfaces.

In Book XI, chapter XI of the Florentine Codex we found documented the form in which all the tlapalli, the precious colors, are obtained and manufactured. Each one is associated to a territory where the dye plants grow, or to a mine from which the mineral pigments are obtained; each color is also linked to the producers and to a tlacuilo that applies it to a canvas or a strip of paper. Thus, each color of Book XI is associated with the particular portrait of a painter. This was the strategy followed by the tlacuiloque (plural of tlacuilo) of the Florentine Codex to self-represent themselves as co-authors of the book.

Our origin as Mexicans begins with the conquest, when a new reality was created product of the violent and creative encounter between the Mesoamerican indigenous peoples and the Spaniards. However, we have little access to the indigenous views of this period, thus we do not really know our history entirely.

One of the most vigorous characteristics of the years after the European invasion of Mesoamerica was the creative impulse of the indigenous peoples, worthy of being considered an example in the history of mankind. As they saw the profound transformation brought by the arrival of the Europeans and suffering the loss of their history with the burning of their painted books, the inhabitants of small centers and large cities committed to repaint and rewrite their history. In the archives of different institutions, thousands of documents give testimony of the great indigenous creative enterprise from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

The indigenous documents of the conquest presented here, chronicle the events in coded paintings, and at the same time narrate and interpret them, endowing the images with multiple meanings. The images correspond to two visions: that of the allied peoples of the Mexica, who lost the war, and that of the allies to the Spaniards represented by the Tlaxcalans, who believed they were on the side of the victors, to subsequently lose their privileges promised by their European allies.

Documents that are the product of the new cultural identity of the indigenous elites during the viceregal period are also presented here. Traditional forms of representation changed through the appropriation of European artistic symbols and conventions. The changes in the pictorial style should be understood as part of the indigenous artistic and political strategy, a fact that emphasizes the importance of the native painters/writers, tlacuiloque (plural of tlacuilo), during this period.

Dye plants and minerals garden

There are no historical records of a garden combining all the dye plants like the one presented here. A collection of trees from different geographical regions, wild plants of the rainforest, shrubs, lichens, and insects, all source of the most important colors used to make pigments and dyes named by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún in the Florentine Codex also known as the General History of the Things of New Spain. The plants have been arranged according to the color they produce following the orientation of the Four Directions of the Universe depicted in the first page of the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer, which represents a Tonalpohualli or count of the days, a ritual calendar of 260 days formed by the combination of twenty names of days (veintenas) and thirteen numbers of days (trecenas).

The count of the days marked in the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer begins in the east, place of the sun, corresponding to the color red; represented first by the cochineal (Dactylopius coccus), an insect that lives in different types of cacti (Opuntia spp.) and whose females are responsible for producing the famous carmine pigment. There are also four young Mexican logwood trees (Haematoxylon brasiletto), native to the region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and whose red core is used to provide dark shades of red. An achiote shrub (Bixa orellana) complements the ensemble; it produces a “light red” according to the Nahua colorists –or dark orange– according to our current notion. The next point of the time account corresponds to the north, left of the east, its colors are black and yellow; The main tree of this section is the mesquite of the genus Prosopis, from the arid regions of Mesoamerica. It is used to produce a black color and its rubber serves as a binding agent for painting. At its sides, there are different plants from which yellows are extracted: three types of cempoalxóchitl (Tagetes spp.), A parasite plant called zacatlaxcalli in Nahuatl (Cuscuta spp.), and quappachtl (Usnea spp.), as well as lichens from the mesophilic forests of the Sierra Norte de Puebla.

The west is the place of white, represented here with two different species of amate (strangler fig): the prieto (dark) and the white traditionally used in papermaking. The supports of the pre-Hispanic codices were usually made from amate paper or deerskin. The cycle ends at the south, whose color is blue-green. Three plants used to make different shades of blue have been gathered: the xiquilite or indigo (Indigofera suffruticosa), the matlalli (Commelina coelestis) and the muitle (Justicia spicigera). From the first one, a dark blue dye is extracted from which a turquoise blue known as Mayan blue was manufactured. A navy blue tone is extracted from the petals of the flowers of the matlalli, and from the muitle, a grayish blue with violet and purple tones can be obtained.