All Children of maíz are welcome

Meet Chico! Chicomecoatl translates as “Seven Serpent,” and she was the Mexica (Aztec) goddess of the harvest during Mesoamerica's post-classic period. The young, newly-of-age girls in the Mexica city of Tenochtitlan would bring offerings of maize to her temple: a celebration not only of agriculture and nourishment, but also of the cycle of blood that imbued the girls with power.    

Devised and performed by Paloma Martinez-Cruz, Bryan Ortiz, Jackie Couchene, Cat Ramos, Eric Serrano and Hannah Grace Morrison for Thompson Gallery for “Abject Object: Feminism, Art & the Academy.” Altar fabricated and installed by Bryan Ortiz.

From exhibition text

The Taco REparations Brigade invites you to lean in, have a seat, and strike a pose on the cochinilla stained cinder blocks. Feel the woven petate mat under your feet. If you have corn, corn syrup, corn dogs, pozole, corn flakes, grits, and/or elote from the señora down the street in your ancestral DNA, we welcome you to activate Chicomecoatl’s temple. As you approach, please engage intentions of tortillas, tacos, tamales, atoles, flamin hots, and above all, for the centuries of women who kneaded and pounded lime-soaked corn on lava stone metates to turn the crop in a super sustenance. They had to get up early every day with the roosters to do that. Way earlier than your first class, even. No joke.