Fernando Palma has made numerous mechatronic sculptures that question the Western understanding of nature and recover, instead, the worldview of the original peoples of Mexico as a way of thinking from another perspective on our relationship with the environment.
'Ma Tohan Nihno mitujillo miyo tegorojo' (My name is coyote ... and you, what's your name?) is a sculpture created from a rabbit skin that resembles a coyote, various three-dimensional elements, and a mechatronic system. This coyote, whose mouth is pierced by scissors, makes a movement to drink water, exposing the vitality and the death that coexist in the world. The arrow that lies on the floor indicates the relationship of the sculpture with the Mesoamerican imaginary.
Palma has worked with the representation of the coyote on various occasions. For the peoples of Mesoamerica, this animal was seen as a playful, cunning, pragmatic and even tricky being. Nowadays, the "coyote" is also the name by which one who "fixes things" or who can " you to the other side" (that is, to cross the border illegally) is known. Taking advantage of this polysemy, the artist connects the remote past with the more current present to invite an imaginary interlocutor to speak with this being and enter his universe.
In some of his works, the artist himself has appeared incarnated as a coyote or as Huehuecoyotl, "old coyote" in Nahuatl - a deity associated with dance and war, song and the Underworld. In these pieces, the presence of the coyote and Huehuecoyotl “is undoubtedly a criticism of the dispossession of space, where the world and nature have remained as something there for consumption. Modernity made man sovereign and in his autonomy he did not need more of the world to make sense of himself. Huehuecoyotl (...) tries to link the disconnected. His becoming an animal allows him to intervene on the cosmic plane and with his dance he asks to reorder what has been torn apart.”[1]
Over the years, Palma has also been interested in Mesoamerican pictography and languages, since in their very constitution they reveal another understanding of the world and the environment. The name of the piece, in fact, is written in Hñahñú, a linguistic variant of Otomi. The LED sign, meanwhile, contains a contemporary Nahuatl prayer of gratitude to the land that Palma has subtly modified. However, to show the lack of attention of the State and the general society to the native peoples, the artist decided not to translate this phrase.
Unlike the official Mexican history, which dreamed of a race as cosmic as it was homogeneous, where the indigenous world was seen in of a glorious past and not as a current reality, Palma uses and summons the imaginary of native peoples as an agency that allows him to operate in the present and imagine other possible futures.
EKA, August 2020
References
https://terremoto.mx/article/fernando-palma-in-conversation-with-malacchi-farrell/
https://pasolibre.grecu.mx/fernando-palma-mecatronica-con-una-cosmovision-indigena/
Fernando Palma . “…amotla otlacualacac oncan tlanahuatiz quename ye huitz quiahuitl…mocualnezcayotl” …no relampagueó para anunciar que llovería… tu hermosura (Exhibition Catalog), Mexico, Museo Universitario del Chopo/ UNAM, 2015, p. 72.
ADDITIONAL NOTE FOR THE CATALOG SHEET:
Fernando Palma suggests never translating what the LED sign says for the reasons stated in the text. However, for research purposes, and not for display or catalog, the phrase on the sign is as follows:
Tlazocamate in ipalnemohuani, centetl tonalli, centetl huetzincapa.
Xinech itah, xinech itha Na nica mo pipilantzin, ximoihtilli, nochi nocnehuan no altlanan, no mexicatlanan.
Thank you giver of life, for the day, for this dawn, look at me, look at me, I am your son. Take care of my siblings, mother earth, my land Mexicah.
[1] Helena Chavez Mac Gregor, “Hacer bailar a los espectros”, in: Fernando Palma. “…amotla otlacualacac oncan tlanahuatiz quename ye huitz quiahuitl…mocualnezcayotl” …no relampagueó para anunciar que llovería… tu hermosura (Exhibition Catalog), Mexico, Museo Universitario del Chopo/ UNAM, 2015, p. 26.
