Futures: Tradition/Globalization

With great honor, the Galería MUY presents the exhibition “Futuros: tradición/globalización” featuring recent works by Antún Kojtom and Kayum Ma’ax, two of the great masters of contemporary Maya art from Chiapas. This exhibition is a reflection in the form of a dialogue on the possible futures of the cultures of Tenejapa and Nahá-Lacandón, respectively.

These are two perspectives and worlds, which overlap significantly but also differ in important ways. Both painters have long artistic careers and are among the first artists of the pictorial art of the Maya cultures.

Kayum Ma’ax (Nahá, 1962) is known for his great style and deep knowledge of the cosmovision and oral tradition. He was awarded the prestigious Chiapas Award in 1992. He paints from the world he inhabits, as a traditional Maya Lacandon farmer-collector. The real and romantic jungle prevails in his work, fascinating for the detail of such meticulous craftsmanship in his own post-naïve style, with narratives that delve into the mysterious animism and daily life of the Maya community (population 250), located in a large expanse of nature, recently (50 years ago) opened to the world.

Antún Kojtom (Ch’ixaltontik, Tenejapa; 1969) paints with the motivation of a creator committed to his people, defining his artistic project for over two decades as “the rescue of the Tseltal Maya cultural memory” and its renewal. Kojtom has shown his work in exhibitions nationally, regionally, and in many European countries. Now, with his family home and studio in the complex Maya-urban society (note that the “colonial” San Cristóbal de Las Casas is increasingly being reclaimed by contemporary Maya), Kojtom immerses himself in a profound understanding of the Maya culture and thought, both lived and studied and theorized. (His concept of ch’ulel, as energy and soul, is crucial in his work.) He has developed a luminous style that reflects on the Mexican modernist school and how it skillfully adapts to the emotional evocation of the traditional oral-visual Tenejapaneca, with wide reference to the ancient Maya civilization. For the first time, a Maya archaeology.

This exhibition is the result of years of individual and dialogical artistic work between Ma’ax and Kojtom. In 2015, the exhibition “Reflejos del Cambio en la Memoria” (Reflections of Change in Memory) was mounted at the Galería MUY, which addressed key aspects of changes in religion, the economy, family and gender relations, and land-territory. As part of their artistic practice since then, they have deepened this reflection. The two artists show great reverence for ancestral traditions, which is evident not only in their work but also in their life choices, community commitments, and spiritual practices. Now, in this important artistic project, Kojtom and Ma’ax take the half-turn and confront the changes in their towns generated by modernity (globalization and capitalism with post-neoliberal coloniality). We read in their works that, indeed, these are unfortunate, dangerous, and virulent changes – we don’t know where this is going to end. In a complex way typical of indigenous peoples, others – or the same – changes are seen as necessary or fortunate, or opportune, inevitable, and empowering – in one way or another – for the new generations.

The change or changes?: a transition to another sociocultural paradigm, or a process of sociocultural reinforcement based on the creativity of the Maya peoples. That is the essence of this research and dialogue between Kojtom and Ma’ax.