“Decapitar el caimán” is the first solo exhibition in Spain by Mexican artist Lorena Ancona (MX, 1981).
For this occasion, the artist presents both old and newly produced works that investigate the ethnography of materials and their relationship with historical processes and memory, traversing both the personal and the collective. “Fauces de abismo” as an entrance to a cave; in the Americas, the caiman is an animal linked to the land. In this relationship of interior, soil, and water, its presence represents fertility, as well as respect and veneration for nature and the territory.
“Decapitating the Caiman” refers to the Maya myth of renewal and the creation of the world, related to the idea of a flood in which the image of the caiman is used. It emerges as a mythical being symbolizing the Earth, which, when decapitated, forcefully releases blood, or rain, or essential liquid for the creation of a world that regenerates. Its ability to move both in water and on land envelops essential ideas of the landscape and makes it the guardian of precious water, linking it to agriculture and, in particular, to corn. This seed has been revered for having been developed in pre-Hispanic times as the main source that nourished and originated American civilizations, providing the possibility, for thousands of years, of dominating a complex territory in its wild nature.
Starting from an exploration of local materials, pre-Hispanic traditions, and symbologies related to southeastern Mexico, the artist takes passages from the Madrid Codex and the Dresden Codex as a reference. Both written Mayan testimonies have survived the conquest, as most of them were burned in what is known as the Auto de fe of Maní when Fray Diego de Landa incinerated a large number of sacred objects and hundreds of Mayan codices. On the brink of an era in which nature approaches an imminent limit of wear, decapitating the caiman emerges as the fundamental ritual of detachment and regeneration.
