Ritual of Myth Making: Reclaim ― A Group Show
Root Division presents Ritual of Myth Making: Reclaim, curated by Katherin Canton & Mariana Moscoso.
Ritual of Myth Making: Reclaim is an invitation to participate in ceremony. The exhibition will take viewers on a journey through time and space, exploring multiple Indigenous pasts, presents, and futures, resulting in a collective cycle of healing that embraces beauty, death, release, and abundance.
Myth making and ritual are central to Indigenous cosmology. These practices expand across time and space from Turtle Island to Abya Yala (the Western Hemisphere), becoming tools for collective liberation that (re)imagine and (re)create the world we live in. Through myth making, narratives are created and shifted that change self, community, and culture.
The journey begins with the detailed ancestral weavings of Rusby Marisol Tum Xinico (Maya Kaqchikel) and the bold graphic prints of Sean Guerra (Chicanx). Next, viewers will pass through the fertile depths of the earth as they experience the film Chaac and Yum, a reimagined contemporary romantic narrative of Chaac, the Mayan deity of Rain, and Yum, the Mayan deity of corn, by Roberto Fatal, Daniel Arizmendi, Xav S-F (Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Yaqui). Finally, viewers will make their way through the present, through the experience of death with the works of Tz’utu Kan (Maya Tz’utujil) and Polaris Castillo (Nahua/Mexikah), releasing colonialism and systemic white supremacy and transmuting the pain through ancestral practices, finding the way in the future. The future is illuminated by Alvaro Tzaj Yotz’s (Maya Tz’utujil) vivid painting Ixkan, and world building installations by Shreya Shankar. Looking to the colors, textures, faces, and sounds that indigenous relatives imagined helps to find the path to collective liberation. Ritual of Myth Making: Reclaim centers healing, creates expansiveness, and offers visions of the future for Indigenous peoples.
On view at Root Division February 10th ― March 20th, 2023 • Exhibition Catalog
Root Division
31 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
