San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Chiapas, México
Three Masters of Painting
Maya and Zoque Artists from Chiapas, Mexico
Gale MUY proudly presents three masters of painting: Maruch Méndez, Saúl Kak, and Raymundo López. Saúl speaks Zoque, while Maruch and Raymundo speak Tsotsil. Their work engages deeply with indigenous Chiapanecan culture and the ongoing defense and reinvention of their territories.
Raymundo López (born 1988 in San Andrés, Chiapas, now working as an agricultural supervisor in Florida, USA) paints — as he has always done — with striking realism. He reflects on the life of the Tsotsil people with nostalgic bravery and sharply critiques the neocolonialism present among employers within the very heart of “opportunity” and disillusionment. His work carries a playful yet serious certainty in the perpetual survival of the Maya.
Saúl Kak (born 1985, Zoque speaker), a filmmaker, digital and audio art enthusiast, and above all an inveterate and accomplished painter, explores the narratives passed down by his tradition-steeped parents to give shape and power to his people’s land claims and their defense. In the series shown at Material Art Fair, Kak’s play with aquamarine tones (there is a word in the local languages that encompasses the blue-green spectrum) reflects the reality that part of Zoque territory was submerged after being expropriated for the construction of the Chicoasén Dam in 1974.
Maruch Méndez (born 1957, monolingual Tsotsil speaker) began her journey in contemporary visual art by joining the MUY artist community nearly a decade ago. A trained embroiderer in ancestral techniques, she divides her time between agricultural work, shepherding, caring for her adoptive children, practicing traditional prayer and healing, and now serving as a religious burden-bearer with profound historical-cosmological knowledge. Maruch’s paintings have been featured in exhibitions in national and international museums. At the Material Art Fair, she presents a series of hand-painted prints — the result of her workshop collaboration with colleagues Darwin Cruz and Alberta Méndez — based on interactions between humans and terrestrial deities in quasi-historical narratives that guide us toward appropriate actions and Maya eudaimonia (good life).
GaleMUY, the Galería MUY and Cultural Center, is dedicated to artistic expression through contemporary media and the exploration of Maya and Zoque peoples of Chiapas, Mexico. Founded in 2014 in San Cristóbal de las Casas, the MUY is a productive and exhibition space where more than 13 young and mid-career creators use their own cultures (Tseltal, Tsotsil, Lacandon Maya, Zoque, etc.) and self-taught styles across painting, sculpture, photography, video art, and performance to portray and reflect on change and continuity, resistance and resilience: the reality of Indigenous life in the globalized village. Themes include gender and sexual freedom, spiritual ecology, and a reappropriation of the grandeur of Classical Maya aesthetics to reflect on territories — of land and culture — defended and, especially amid migration, reforged.
Artworks
Birds | Maruch Méndez
Hand-painted over print, on paper
39.7 x 35.2 cm
10 prints
2023
“Birds are often messengers of the gods. They can bring good news, but they can also warn of dangers or even of imminent death. It all depends on the type of bird and how it appears and sings. Not everyone pays attention to these omens. I have learned to respect them.”
Candles: When a person falls ill | Maruch Méndez
Acrylic on canvas
70 x 70 cm
2018
“When someone is sick, they have to light candles to ask for health and also kill a chicken to ask for recovery.”
Happy family | Maruch Méndez
Photograph painted on archival quality paper, signed
51 x 40.4cm
1/15 prints
2023
“There was a man who was very poor, he had no house or money, but then he met a young woman and married her. From there, they gradually prospered. The man was able to buy his land, build his house, and buy a car. Their daughter was born, and she was very intelligent, smarter than her parents. The land they found was very fertile, any plant they planted grew.”
Jsut’ubi (Whirlwind) | Maruch Méndez
Acrylic on canvas
60 x 70 cm
2018
“This is a place called Xila Ton, where a whirlwind was born, like a large serpent. There was a house nearby, and it swept away all the clothes. Then the woman who lived there began to scream, and the girl saw a vulture, to whom she asked kindly to return her clothes, but they didn’t listen. Then a beetle appeared, and the girl asked the same thing: to return her clothes. The beetle did so, and the whirlwind returned to the place where it had come from, and all the clothes returned to the girl’s house.
There were many women in the place because what they saw was not normal, so they sought a healer to prevent harm. They smoked it with honey and incense and kept the clothes for three days. They also told the girl to stay there, because the healer said it could be a bad omen. But the girl dreamed that it wasn’t something bad, but a sign of good luck, and that she would be given a job to become a healer. Now, she heals illnesses quickly and can also cure sheep and horses when they are sick. The girl is paid very well for curing people or animals. The medicines she uses are vankilal (Moy), lime, and garlic.”
Our root | Maruch Méndez
Acrylic on canvas
35 x 40 cm
2020
“This child is our root, when he was born, the mouse was very happy and played the guitar out of joy for the birth. The circles with dots are stars.”
Oy jun vinik bat ta camposanto (The man who went to the cemetery) | Maruch Méndez
Hand-painted over engraving, on paper
10 prints
29.5 x 19.5 cm
2023
“There was a man who went to the cemetery, leaving his pants and shirt behind, and turned into a goat. He then went to the house of a sick young man, jumped to enter while his family was asleep, and started draining the sick man’s blood until he died. He placed it in a bottle and delivered it to the caretaker of the cemetery (the devil). Later, he met a friend who learned everything from the goat-man, and together they tried to help a sick girl. But the first man had ill intentions, and the friend ended up warning the girl’s family. They got rid of that devil, and the girl was cured.”
The cornfield | Maruch Méndez
Hand-painted over engraving, on paper
10 prints
30 x 20 cm
2023
“The work is related to planting, when I planted. But it was a bad day, and although the corn grew, it didn’t come out well. If the birth is not good, we don’t grow well. But if it’s a good day when we are born, we will live to an old age. This is also how it is with corn. We plant, we take care of the cornfield, but if it was a bad day, well, by God’s will, the squirrels, the birds eat the flower or the very tender corn. There is plenty of cornfield, and it can be a good day, and if it is near the villages, then the animals don’t enter the cornfield. Again, if it’s a bad, inappropriate day, of course, squirrels, birds, and mice enter. It becomes ungrateful, there is work, and it benefits the animals (under the rule of divinities). If the day is good, the cornfield thrives. This is the content of my work.”
Three women | Maruch Méndez
Acrylic on canvas
1.80 x 173.2 cm
2021
“In this work, it talks about three women who come from the red earth above Ixtapa. They used to go to graze their sheep in a place where they could find good pasture. These three girls always sat on a wavy rock, they would always sit there. Every time they went to graze their sheep, they would only sit in that spot, for months they kept sitting there, but they didn’t know that this place was a water source for animals like the tiger, the fox, the badger, the armadillo, and the squirrel. Since they arrived very early and left very late, the tiger would just walk around and around all the time, wanting to drink water, but it couldn’t because the girls were there.
This jaguar, being thirsty, asked the snakes to scare the girls away. The snakes arrived where the girls were sitting, but they weren’t scared and said they just came to rest on the stones. Above them, there were three streams, and the owner of the stream shouted loudly: ‘Girls, something is going to happen to you three, something is going to happen in your lives.’ They didn’t pay attention to it, and didn’t take seriously what they heard. The next day, they went to graze and sat in the same spot, but suddenly, they disappeared. In the blink of an eye, they were no longer there; they turned into giant rocks. They used to sit all day, but now their punishment is to stand all the time, transformed into large rocks. Their parents cried and cried because they searched for their daughters everywhere but never found them. They were punished for making the children of nature suffer by blocking the place where they drank water.”
The cry and the prayer | Raymundo López
Oil on canvas
67.5 x 48 cm
2019
“The French playing cards are related to the indigenous culture of San Andrés Sakamch’en because among the rituals is ‘the ritual of the milpa’ that invokes the lightning for the protection of the corn from the wind.” These symbols are used:
Heart: the Church or religion
Diamond: money, construction, or economy
Spade: the struggle
Clover: the harvest or agriculture In this case, division will always be present, it seems, and now we suffer the damages from the church due to the earthquake. When the church was built, there was unity! Because everyone contributed with a donation.”
The communication | Raymundo López
Oil on canvas
53.5 x 83.5 cm
2023
“This work represents the perfect staging captured in an image, the children of people who work illegally in the United States. It is not easy to enter and leave the country, which is why the children engage in constant communication, as it is the only way to know how their parents are, what they are doing, share their exploits, achievements, etc.; in other words, the most important events while the parents are not with them. I mention fathers because there are also working mothers who leave their children to work illegally for a better future for their family.”
Augury | Raymundo López
Oil on canvas
90 x 60 cm
2019
“I remember the pains of my childhood, with the other children who were hiding somewhere in Aldama. We were many children playing, but many got sick, and since we were all together, there was no hygiene. Every night, the owl would come and start scratching the walls, maybe it knew that some child was going to die. I placed the owl in the work as a symbol of death and the clock that announced the arrival of the hour. Many children would get stomach infections and then die because there was no one to take care of them.”
Granadillas | Raymundo López
Oil on canvas
100 x 50 cm
2019
“In 1994, when the struggle began, we were sheltered in a house. While we played, we saw airplanes passing by in the sky dropping bombs, but they mostly dropped them on the hill. One day I asked my sister what those things were that the airplanes were dropping. She answered that they were ‘granadillas.’ I got very scared, and from then on, I was afraid of granadillas because I thought they were the ones the airplanes were dropping. I was very afraid of them. My sister, playing, would throw one at me, and I would start crying.”
The hoja santa | Raymundo López
Watercolor on cotton paper
35 x 50 cm
2020
“In these difficult times, the people of San Andres are desperate and fearful due to the successive deaths caused by COVID, as people have had to resort to searching for medicinal plants due to the lack of medicine. One of these is represented by the ‘mumo’ leaf; for my people, it is the medicine for COVID, and for many, this leaf is sacred.”
The goose | Raymundo López
Oil on canvas
110 x 69.5 cm
2020
“This work arises from a memory from 1994, when my mother hurriedly took us out because my father was a leader. Then the military entered our house, and we went to take refuge in Aldama in Campana Che ‘en. That’s why the chickens and geese stayed behind.”
The mask | Raymundo López
Watercolor on cotton paper
35 x 50 cm
2020
“Many people from San Andrés and other places initially did not believe in the pandemic. People said it didn’t exist and that it was just a mask from the government, like in the elections. In my opinion, this happens because it is something we cannot see, as it is an invisible enemy, and this is what I represented in this work.”
The Heron is going to eat you | Raymundo López
Oil on canvas
53.5 x 83.5
2023
“This image represents the constant struggle of one of the tasks performed by a person who emigrates to another country, whether legally or illegally. Strawberry picking is one of the jobs that greatly contributes to the economic improvement of our Mexican compatriots, as well as workers from other countries who come to seek a better future working in the United States. The saying ‘the heron is going to eat you’ is for those who work slowly because they are beginners, so to speak, in strawberry picking. To improve their performance, they are shouted at: ‘the heron is going to eat you,’ with the intention of motivating them to give their best effort and adapt to the job day by day.”
Not everything is lost, there is hope | Saúl Kak
Acrylic on canvas
29.5 x 37.8 cm
2023
“In this work, I painted a woman, as in life, many times we don’t know where to go, we are confused, and we lack clarity, making mistakes in what we do. We know there are people who speak ill of us, there is envy, and they confuse us in our lives, but despite everything, if we invoke the deities of the mountains, they can help us find a good path and hope for our personal future.”
Entering Ipstojk, Twenty Houses | Saúl Kak
Acrylic on canvas
58.5 x 41 cm
2023
“In the belief of my culture, there is a sacred place called Twenty Houses, where the Zoques must go to declare before our ancestors our actions in earthly life. We enter this place at two moments: one is temporal, which happens through our dreams, and the other is eternal, when we bid farewell to our life on Earth. Through our dreams, the ancestors give us our gifts, which we will return to our community in our lifetime.”
Healing to Nasakobajk (land) | Saúl Kak
Acrylic on canvas
70 x 70 cm
2023
“Today we are experiencing many different types of conflicts around the world, which have affected our societies and our natural resources. Offerings are made with reed music, drums, and dances to our goddess Näwayomo to bless and sprinkle the holy earth with new and sacred water. The OKO women (healers) pray, sing, and heal this suffering land.”
Hurricane Eta | Saúl Kak
Acrylic on canvas
35.7 x 53.3 cm
2023
“At the end of 2020, Hurricane Eta severely struck the Zoque region in the northwest of the state of Chiapas, causing serious damage to the area and loss of human lives, which led the Zoque people to mobilize and reflect on human actions toward Mother Earth. In an assembly held on December 6, it was agreed to make an offering at the Acambak River in Chapultenango, Chiapas, to ask forgiveness from Näwayomo for human actions on a global level.”
Jalai (Father) | Saúl Kak
Acrylic on canvas
58.5 x 41 cm
2023
“He is an ancestral farmer who comes to us in our dreams and accompanies us; he is our guardian along with the jaguar (nahual). Our ancestors Mojk Mama (Mother Corn) and Mojk Jara (Father Corn) also accompany us; they are the ones who watch over us during our earthly life.”
Exile | Saúl Kak
Acrylic on canvas
29.5 x 37.8 cm
2023
Metza (Two) | Saúl Kak
Acrylic on canvas
1.46 x 0.96 m
2010
“In this work, I depict the jaguar, but you can also see the silhouette of a pregnancy and two people inside, representing life, accompanied by Maya symbols. Metza is a word in Zoque that means ‘two’ in Spanish. The running figure is a symbol of infinity on the internet.”
No to fracking | Saúl Kak
Acrylic on canvas
80 x 60 cm
2018