Introducing Digital Clouds Don’t Carry Rain

There are over 6 million contemporary descendants of the Maya civilisation, known collectively as the Maya. The short film that features in this exhibition is narrated in a Mayan language indigenous to Southern Mexico. During the colonisation of Central America, all indigenous languages were eclipsed by Spanish. By harnessing the power of Mayan languages, Alcázar-Duarte seeks to create a counter-narrative that severs the violent taxonomies that uphold colonial power.

You will notice numerous references to Maya concepts, places and people in the exhibition. In particular, Alcázar-Duarte references the burning of the Maya codices - books containing the knowledge and language of the Maya - which took place on 12 July 1562. This act of cultural erasure was led by Diego de Landa, a Spanish bishop of the Roman Catholic faith, who claimed Maya cultures and rituals were ‘evil’.

Rooted in the centre of the exhibition is a new installation consisting of fifty-six 3D printed lilies, forming a garden of technology which can be activated using an augmented reality app. Alcázar-Duarte coded this display using an algorithm inspired by the collective intelligence of bee colonies – juxtaposing and morphing the form of the fleur-de-lis with faces, gestures and expressions depicted in Casta paintings. The Augmented Reality animates a tree, that seemingly grows from the map of the Yucantán peninsula. As Alcázar-Duarte explains, the Augmented Reality serves as “a tool to expand what is inside the frame of my photographs.”