“The Coyolxauhqui Imperative 2020” by Juan Carlos Portillo, Cory Scott McCormick

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Still from The Coyolxauhqui Imperative 2020 featuring Tlazolteotl and an array of monarch butterflies representing the souls of dead children

Title:

The Coyolxauhqui Imperative 2020

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Composer, Director, Choreographer:



• Juan Carlos Portillo
• Cory Scott McCormick

Filmmaker, Video Artist, or Animator(s):



• Liliana Conlisk Gallegos

Symposium:

• ISEA2024: 29th International Symposium on Electronic Art

Venue(s):

• QUT Creative Industries Precinct, QUT The Sphere , Brisbane , Australia

Artist Statement:

The Coyolxauhqui Imperative 2020 is the first example of no-muralismo, or artisanal rasquache immersive muralism. This audiovisual, pre-Hispanic history-based VR piece combines research, artistic repurposing, and spoken word in Spanglish and Nahuatl to honor and visualize the experiences of Indigenous and Latinx women of the Americas, offering a decolonial retelling of womanhood in Mexico and the United States while addressing European colonialism, US imperialism, and globalization.

The project features three archetypes of womanhood from Mexican and Xicanx mythopoetics: “La Malinche” (The traitor), “La Llorona” (The weeper), and “La Chingada” (The victim). Using TiltBrush in VR, I designed a virtual world with dialogues between my analogue paintings, digital interventions on Mexican murals, and digitized excerpts from pre-Hispanic Mexica-Tenochca codices. Theoretically, it explores mythopoetic representations of womanhood, Xicanx queer feminism, and my cosmovision as a transfronteriza, Xicanx artist with Southern and Baja Californian Indigenous ancestry from the Tijuana border.

The project invites users to engage in multiple dialogues depending on the accompanying audio, reinforcing the importance of Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of “the Coyolxauhqui imperative” and the freedom of diversity and inclusion in identity-based experiences.

Category:

• Screening
• Video Art