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1. Can you first summarise your artistic journey? How did you start? Which are the main stages of your career ?

I am a visual artist born in Chile and a naturalised citizen of Mexico. I have a bachelor's degree in Art and a master's degree in Cultural Studies. I have participated in more than 50 group exhibitions in Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Argentina. USA, Canada, Ecuador and France; and 10 solo exhibitions in Chile and Mexico. I was selected by the Mexican curatorial magazine m'ART as one of 40 emerging artists to be collected in Mexico (2010). Two of my paintings are part of the permanent collection of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Castro, Chile and the Museum of the Island of Cozumel, Mexico. I am also a professor at the Yucatan School of Art (ESAY) since 2005. In the past, I was curator and art manager of the project ‘Galería DEmergencia’ funded from 2013 to 2015 by the government, with the purpose of promoting emerging visual art in Yucatan. In 2015, I was awarded the Municipal Fund for Visual Arts of the city of Mérida for the project ‘MayaOP’, which then inspired the current project ‘Sacred Geometries’. Three works that are part of this series were selected for the 11th Florence Biennale 2017, during which I received the first prize ‘Lorenzo il Magnifico’ in the drawing, graphics and calligraphy category.

I am currently in the process of completing the ‘Sacred Geometries’ series with the goal of creating an art book presenting my drawings and watercolours in a catalogue raisonné containing a selection of the most relevant geometric forms of postclassical Yucatan Maya art. I began my career as a painter after studying art in Canada (at the Ontario College of Arts and McMaster University) and finally completed my university studies at the University of Chile in Santiago. I participated in the XV International Art Biennal of Valparaiso in 1987 and represented my country at the 1st encounter of Latin American Young Artists in Brasilia, Brazil in 1988. Since 1990, painting started to be devalued and neo-conceptualism became fashionable. At the time, I had the impression that neo-conceptualism was an overrated and underpaid form of design. So I decided to pursue a career in design. I was the creative director of three advertising agencies in Chile until I moved to Mexico City in 1997, pursuing a cosmopolitan but still Latin lifestyle. In Mexico I became a set designer for film, an art director for TV and resumed my career as a painter. In 2005 I was invited to found an art school, the Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán (ESAY) where I still work today as a professor of drawing and art theory. Between 2011 and 2012 I obtained a Master's degree in Cultural Studies, specialising in Visual Culture. Today I can say that my art is a hybrid of painting, design and visual culture theory. My goal as an artist is to successfully participate in the European art market, conceived as a vehicle to develop a collective movement for the revival of Maya art in Yucatan.

2. We know you are working on a very important and ambitious project, ‘Sacred Geometries’, can you tell us about it? How did it begin? What are the motivations and objectives?

After the post-Classic Maya era in Yucatan (1000 B.C.), population growth and depletion of natural resources led to an ecological imbalance that caused migrations and wars to acquire new land for food and resources. This event is known today as the ‘collapse of the Maya culture’. Later came the Spanish conquest, and in the mid-19th century, the exploitation of agave fibre, which turned more than 50% of the state's land into a monoculture plantation. Monocultures lead not only to the loss of biological diversity but also of cultural identity. The agave industry has monopolised the economic activities of Maya communities for more than a century. Colonisation and the violent modernisation of society prevented the spread of traditional ritual geometry. For a brief period, post-revolutionary corporate art saved some models by integrating them into an avant-garde architectural style known as ‘Neomaya’.

Today, the reproduction of traditional Maya geometric patterns from Yucatan is almost non-existent. Some sources have only been found in archaeological maps and academic theses. Approximately two million tourists visit Yucatan each year and sadly they will never know whether their souvenir designs come from Yucatan, Guatemala, Belize, Chiapas or China. I am looking for funds to catalogue these extraordinary and unique designs that will be reference points for our future designers, artists and artisans. The main idea is to produce a comprehensive research and a single catalogue, aimed at the general public. Although this is not academic research, experts in archaeological, anthropological and epigraphic studies, especially with regard to interpretative hypotheses, will certify the contents. This publication will fulfil a long awaited aspiration and is a tribute to Maya culture, both ancient and contemporary. The idea behind my artistic production is to use the documented forms to create original models that will be included in a catalogue that artists can benefit from as a reference point for producing art and design with reference to their origins. An important goal, from my point of view as an artist, is to create a social form of contemporary art, a non-colonial form of aesthetics, which can be clearly differentiated from fanciful egocentric and individualistic art forms that saturate the market and debase the work of serious researchers/artists.

3. Can you tell us more specifically about the Maya symbolism you have selected for this project?

The Maya symbolism contained in the models is a geometric abstraction of ancient artefacts and represents the Maya cosmogony, which still has force today among contemporary Maya. Although the present forms of representation of the sacred are syncretic and hybridised with Western iconography, the worldview remains virtually the same. Thus, most of the figures represent the universal order as conceived by the Maya people, who believe in the existence of a paradise or at least a higher world, a middle world (planet Earth) and an afterlife. The main shapes include flowers and concentric squares, designs alluding to social order, palm leaves, feathers, shells, a cosmic space-time along with a depiction of the sun, constellations, rattlesnake designs and other natural forms suggesting celestial geometries.

4. Regarding the Sacred Geometries project, what are your choices in terms of technique, style and language?

The painting and the graphic design, which consists of creating different patterns using the geometric forms of late Classic and post-Classic Maya art documented by the buildings found in Yucatan, serve as a resource to renew local interest in the heritage of Maya art. Since the project is based on social impact and will benefit the cultural industries of the region, at its early stage, the pieces will not be expensive. A fair price is necessary to reach more collectors and to create awareness about the exciting idea of a revival of geometric Maya art. That is why I decided to work with watercolours on a cotton sheet and to use silk-screen prints for the drawings. In this way each work is unique as I mix a manual technique with printing. It is not serial and the patterns can be printed in any colour or combination of colours desired. The result is reminiscent of modern OP Art, especially the art of Bridget Riley whom I admire, with a distinctive Mayan style.

5. To conclude, what are the cultural and social implications of the project?

The social implications are many. If my works sell well, I will be able to publicise my catalogue and spread the knowledge documented in my research. Artists, craftsmen, cultural industries and others will have a reference point to use to renew local design in many areas in a creative way. A further step is the acquisition of cultural independence for the Mayan people, which will benefit them in many ways if they start looking at their heritage instead of obsessively looking towards the US and Europe. When they come to Merida, tourists are surprised by the European influence in the overall aesthetics of the peninsula. It is time for them to be surprised by the originality of Maya design. Since the beginning of the 20th century, many artists have insisted on the importance of appreciating Mayan art and culture. This has been done but in a general way considering that the Maya area covers southern Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras. In this project, I am adding some precision to the aesthetic landscape by putting a specific style originating in the Yucatan Peninsula into the public domain. So another benefit is the differentiation and creation of a design that appeals to the origins. In this way I hope that my collectors, together with my students and myself, will become an active part of a social aesthetic movement.