Altepetl

Stefania Strouza

19 October 2018

Work

Synthetic crocodile skin, obsidian, silica beads, resin 200 x 100 x 5 cm Courtesy the artist and a.antonopoulou.art. The work was developed during the BKA artist-in-residence program in Mexico City in 2018 with the support of the Austrian Cultural Forum

Altepetl refers to an Aztec term meaning ‘water mountain’, the ideal environment in which a civilisation flourishes. Stefania Strouza uses the word to refer to the history of Mexico City in relation to water, colonialism and climate change. Inspired by animist representations of the environment on pre-Columbian maps and the feminised deities of the land and river waters, the sculpture takes the form of an imagined three-dimensional map of the ancient lake and its surroundings. The materials of the work bear environmental symbols, ‘capturing’ the gradual transformations of the landscape from the natural to the anthropogenic. A synthetic leather with crocodile skin texture represents the female earth goddess in Aztec cosmology, while its jaded colour points to Chalchiuhtlicue, namely ‘She of the jade skirt,’ the Aztec goddess of water. The silica pearls lying on the skin, commonly used today as a synthetic substance for desiccation, trace the original shape of Mexico City’s lake system before the Spaniards drained it. Finally, breasts made of local obsidian mark the sculpture as symbols of the volcanic terrain surrounding the city, but also point to feminicides in contemporary Mexico. The work was developed during the BKA artist-in-residence programme in Mexico City in 2018 with the support of the Austrian Cultural Forum.