Research

Introduction

This paper studies ways that space shapes identity by examining a contemporary sculpture using a multicultural theory. I focus on analyzing the role of physical space in the construction of cultural identity across time by studying Mariana Castillo-Deball’s No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) (Figure 1) through Gloria Anzaldua’s Nepantilism theory. 

For this research paper, I employ Nepantilism as a theory that makes visible areas where two or more things overlap. In this hybrid space, things are always in transition. In its 2019 installation, No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) is a plastic re-production of a Mexica archeological object named Coatlicue (Figure 2 and 3) from the Post-Classic era in Meso- America. Nepantilism prompts me to view the sculpture as an ambiguously cultural object because of its installation at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in 2019.  

Although No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) is rooted in Mexican cultural contexts when studying it with Nepantilism I interpret it as a culturally-in-between object. The sculpture is evidence of the contemporary hybridization of Mexican and American cultural identity. By applying Nepantilism to No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010), I study it as formal threedimensional evidence of a hybrid cultural history through its use of space informed by its historical context, technique, materiality and orientation. 

I analyze Castillo-Deball’s sculpture using Anzaldua’s theory of Nepantilism because the theory helps to make visible a relationship between space and cultural identity by establishing a multi-centric perspective that acknowledges cultural pluralisms. My research results from my physical visit to the sculpture as installed at the New Museum in February 2019 in New York, and my subsequent research of the Gloria Evangelina Anzaldua Papers part of the Benson Latin American Collection at The University of Texas at Austin, Texas and Anzaldua’s published texts. By studying the sculpture through Anzaldua’s ideas, I broaden contemporary understandings on being culturally-in-between by using formal evidence found in No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) which makes visible relationships of visibility and invisibility through physical locations in space and time. 

 

CONTEXT OF THEORY AND SCULPTURE

In this section I introduce key components to my research paper. I open with my reason for choosing Nepantilism and elaborate on its meanings and the theorist Gloria Anzaldúa. I follow with the artist and the artwork of study No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010). 

Gloria Anzaldúa explores dynamics of the relationship between Mexican and American culture, instead of a hierarchy. I use the writings of Anzaldúa because of their ability to balance aspects of cultural identity and art outside and within Western/Eurocentric contexts. Through Nepantilism, Anzaldua expands the ways cultural identity is constructed by questioning the influence Western/Eurocentric culture has had to Mexican culture through acts of colonization. This is important to this research project because the contemporary sculpture of analysis acts as a case-study on the influence colonization has had on Mexican cultural identity. The use of space in Castillo-Deball’s  No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) prompts pre-colonial and colonial moments in the ancient history of Mexican culture through its a plastic replication of a Mexica pre-colonial stone monolith titled Coatlicue.

Geographical space influenced Gloria Anzaldúa to build her theory of Nepantla from her personal lived experiences and memories of living in North America, around the border between two nations. ^{1 2} The two nations she straddles in her life and her work are Mexico and the United States of America. Anzaldúa uses her personal reality of living on a geographical area on earth where two national identities and cultures collide (Mexican and American). She experienced the gradient of the two cultures by living in and around a South Texas town called Hargill, in an area referred to some Texans as “the valley.” Her geographical positioning between two nations physically, conceptually, and linguistically helped and influenced Anzaldúa to envision a third space where American and Mexican cultures meet. Anzaldúa’s multicultural method of theorizing transforms contradictions and ambivalence into a new form of understanding the subjectivity of human identities which overlap two or more ways of being.³ Her work predominately focuses on the hybridization of Mexican culture by colonial powers. 

In Anzaldúa’s work, Nepantla is a theoretical framework about the politics of culture that shifts cultural margins to the center by focusing on notions of borderless-ness, borders and hybridism.⁴ It attempts to achieve a balance between specific cultural identities of cultural subgroups and broader mainstream cultural narratives. The balance between mainstream and minority narratives is part of a global social and cultural movement known as multiculturalism that attempts to question established canons, metanarratives, imposed silences and official histories of non-European cultures.⁵ 

Other scholars have used Nepantilism to write about in-between cultural spaces outside of art historical contexts.⁶ In this research paper, Nepantilism prompts me to question the official history and imposed silences upon Mexican cultural identity by colonial powers. I do so by studying a contemporary sculpture rooted in Mexican cultural identity as exhibited in an American institution called the New Museum of Contemporary Art in 2019.

 

No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) is a sculpture made by Castillo-Deball in 2010 that revisits issues of visibility and invisibility associated with Coatlicue as it was experienced and re-iterated historically in casts made by foreigners in settings of cross-cultural encounters since the 1800s. In its pre-colonial context, the stone monolith of Coatlicue was a spiritual object used to represent mythological/spiritual concepts of Mexica culture.⁷ During Spain’s colonization of Mexico in the 1500s it was toppled over and buried under rubble.⁸  Almost 300 years later, it was unearthed in 1790 during construction to the city square and became an archeological object used to create interpretations of the past by colonial powers such as Spain. 

This is the point in its historical narrative Castillo-Deball’s sculpture engages due to the horizontal orientation of the sculpture in the gallery. She exhibits it horizontally to simulate the moment of encounter in 1790 when it was found laying horizontally underground. To create this work, Castillo-Deball used fiberglass-resin to produce a one-to-one scale modular cast of Coatlicue which is  assembled with metal bolts and washers. It is an in-the-round plastic sculpture measuring approximately 99” x 48” x 48” (or about 250 x 120 x 120 cm) (Figure 1). 

Initially trained as a printmaker, Mariana Castillo-Deball creates multi-dimensional work which reflects her interest in the relationships of positive and the negative formal properties of cultural objects.⁹ She has extended this interest in positive and negative formal properties to a conceptual inquiry about visibility and invisibility.  By studying who accessed and manipulated cultural objects, how and where they were accessed, including historically, how they have been presented, she seeks to create new understandings on the historical contexts of cultural artifacts such as Coatlicue. Her solo exhibition at the New Museum titled “Finding Oneself Outside” comprised of six artworks: two prints, two sculptures and two installations (Figure 4). Together, these works represent five different series which highlight her interests in the way the materiality and positioning of cultural objects across local and global geographical spaces creates a multiplicity of existences through time that alter perceptions and interpretations of them (Figure 5). Space and multiplicity of existences (multiple ways of being/existing) are key themes of the artist’s work I connect to Anzaldúa’s. Four of the artworks in the exhibition deal specifically with the way in which Mexican archeological objects and ideas have been re(presented) by colonial audiences in local and global cultural contexts (Figure 6). In this paper I focus on one of these four artworks titled No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010). In this exhibition context, No

Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) acts as a case-study on the visibility and invisibility of a Mexican cultural object by colonial powers such as Spain and America. 

In the following three sections I delve into the ways No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) expands contemporary understandings on Mexican cultural identity through its use of space. I explore the relationships shared between cultural identity and space by identifying connections between exhibited space, the materiality of space, and the politics of space concerning histories of colonialism, nation-states and beyond, including decolonization. 

 

EXHIBITED SPACE

I studied how the sculpture is exhibited within the New Museum because it was a space and time I was able to access the object first-hand. As a sculptural object, I felt that to fully grasp its formal qualities, I had to experience it in three dimensions as opposed to photographs of its installation in past exhibitions in 2006 and 2010.

In this section I go over the ways in which the Exhibited space of No Solid Form Can

Contain You (2010) functions as formal evidence for Nepantilism. Anzaldua’s Nepantilism theory tells me that the sculpture’s meaning is not defined by a singular space, it does not privilege an understanding of the object as having a distinct exterior versus interior. In her text “Light in the Dark” Anzaldúa introduces the application of Nepantilism as a balance of multiple perceptions simultaneously:     

Perceiving something from two different angles creates a split in awareness that can lead to the ability to control perception, to balance contemporary society’s worldview with the non-ordinary worldview, and to move between them to a space that simultaneously exists and does not exist. I call entering this realm “Nepantla” – the Nahuatl word for an inbetween space, el lugar entre medio. Nepantla, palabra indígena: un concepto que se refiere a un lugar no-lugar. ¹⁰

In the chapter the quote is found in, Anzaldúa presents Nepantla as a bridge between worlds. In my application to No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010), the ways of existing its formal features prompts are the material, immaterial; spiritual and archeological; colonial and decolonial. 

I visited and studied the contemporary sculpture for 2 days in February 2019. After the 2 days, I built my writings and analysis of the sculpture from the photographs, sketches and memories created. In my analysis of the piece, I study/interpret it alongside the museum panels (wall texts) in the exhibition. They provide textual information on the archeological and spiritual/mythological contexts associated with the formal shapes reproduced by the fiberglassresin modules. The museum panels provide a historical context on the sculptural aesthetics of No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) such as the interior and exterior views and horizontal orientation. 

Anzaldúa’s ideas of Nepantilism tell me that the sculpture is a contemporary object which makes visible multiple ways of existing across multiple spaces such as; sculptural and literary, assembled and horizontal, interior and exterior. No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010)’s rigid materiality and modular composition enable it to be exhibited in multiple ways and resemble its original form. In its exhibition in 2019, it is placed horizontally to simulate a moment of encounter within the history of the original stone object which is also presented on a museum label across the sculpture. Castillo-Deball exhibits No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) in a singular concentrated space in the gallery by re-assembling the modular fiberglass parts with metal bolts and washers to simulate the exterior and interior of Coatlicue (Figure 7). Its assembled form creates a singular space which creates an exterior and interior view possible by its solid and translucent assemblage. 

From certain angles and distances in the gallery, the sculpture appears as a solid object with an irregularly organic silhouette. At other angles, the sculpture reveals an opening into what appears to be an interior. The opening of the sculpture reveals a non-solid space created by the assembled plastic casts and some metal bolts and washers (Figure 8 and 9) The interior is hollow and creates a space that is the backside/underside of the planes visible on the exterior of the sculpture. In this method of installation, the interior view of the sculpture is made possible through the translucency of the fiberglass-resin and the amount of track lighting directed towards the sculpture (Figure 8). 

Although the plastic modules look the same on the inside and outside, their hollow arrangement creates four different views of space it takes up in the exhibition. The views encountered at first glance are exterior/outside and inside/interior. Two other perspectives are when you can see both simultaneously while facing the West wall (Figure 6), and fourth when you see through it when approaching it and looking between and through the modules (Figure 10). The feeling of depth in No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) creates a feeling of displacement due to its simultaneous presentation of the outer, inner and in-between of a solid archeological object in three-dimensions. 

Nepantilism focuses my attention to the gaps between the assemblage where I see the sculpture as a visual hybridization of the interior and exterior space. This hybridization of interior and exterior space evokes a feeling of disorientation about the archeological and spiritual/mythological context the contemporary object is entangled with. Through Nepantilism, the archeological history represents the colonial, and the spiritual/mythological represents the pre-colonial. By the re(production) of the cultural object in contemporary times, it becomes a decolonial sculpture of Mexican cultural identity.

 

BETWEEN ARCHEOLOGICAL AND SPIRITUAL/MYTHICAL SPACE

This section will go over the ways in which the material space of No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) functions as formal evidence for Nepantilism. My application of Nepantilism to the sculpture pushed me into a new perspective where I can peer between the interior and exterior spaces created by No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010). I interpret the exterior to be the archeological and the interior to be the spiritual. Gloria’s ideas of Nepantilism help me perceive the shape of the sculpture as a hybridization of a cultural object and idea/myth visualized using space. 

 For this research project, I make a distinction between the Andesite carved stone monolith and the spiritual/mythological concept which is represented aesthetically by the contemporary object.

There is Coatlicue the physical archeological stone object, and COATLICUE the non-physical spiritual/mythological concept/ideology. 

            The myth and the object of Coatlicue is a point of departure for both Anzaldua and Castillo-Deball. Anzaldúa focuses on the concept/myth of the deity by studying and writing about its historical contexts in Chapter 3 of her book Borderlands 1987. She writes about

COATLICUE as a “mother goddess” with multiple selves. [Footnote Borderlands page 49) Rather than presenting the historical context of the stone monolith Coatlicue, Anzaldua presents a spiritual context which pre-dates the physically carved stone monolith.

            The artist on the other hand, made the work of art based on the ancient sculpture of Coatlicue (Figure 2). The sculpture is a fiberglass-resin cast of the stone monolith. It is a modular hollow mold that can be used to re-produce the stone monolith Coatlicue. In this respect, Castillo-Deball focuses on the physical object that signifies the spiritual/mythological identity of Coatlicue.  

            No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) is a hybridization of a Mexican physical stone monolith and non-physical spiritual/mythological representation of Coatlicue. It hybridizes it by re(producing) aspects of Coatlicue’s scale, aesthetics through its sculptural form, and historical context through printed text displayed on a museum panel across the sculpture.

         Through my application of Nepantilism to No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010), I widen and extend the narrative of the pre-colonial object and myth of Coatlicue to meet the postcolonial/decolonial. Nepantilism pushes me to look and question the middle-space seen between the multiple contexts such as the spiritual/mythological and archeological, colonial and post/decolonial, visible and invisible.  These dualities/binaries are simultaneously visualized through No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010)’s simultaneous interior and exterior and in-between views (Figure 10).  

           Nepantilism promotes a hybrid perspective that shifts my focus to the liminal overlapping space between the two different ways of perceiving offered through colonial and post/decolonial contexts.¹¹ In this light, No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) functions as a post/de-colonial three-dimensional case-study of moments in time of Mexican culture through it’s reproduction Coatlicue. Through its sculptural aesthetics, it hybridizes moments in the pre-colonial, colonial, and post/de-colonial within Mexican culture. 

         Castillo-Deball looks at the micro-history of the archeological object in the early 1800s,

Anzaldua’s pushes its micro-history beyond colonial influence. I perceive the contemporary sculpture as an updated visualization of the myth and object of the deity Coatlicue across time and space as evidence of the hybridization of Mexican cultural identity through time and space.

            The spiritual/mythological ideology of COATLICUE is a creation story. The mythological narrative takes many shapes and forms throughout carious times and regions of Mexico.¹² I contextualize my research on the spiritual/mythological context of Coatlicue in

Anzaldua’s writings. She is not the first or only scholar to write about Coatlicue. ¹³ What interested me about the way she wrote about Coatlicue is how she addressed and brought attention to the multiple manifestations the deity can have, and how other tribes in the same geographical area of Meso-America have similar deities with different names. ¹⁴

            The theorist focuses on the non-physical spiritual/mythological symbolism of the narrative of Coatlicue. In Anzaldua’s writings, she digs deeper into the ancestral history of the deity within her book Borderlands (1987). ¹⁵ In Chapter 3 Entering the Serpent, Anzaldúa reveals that the Coatlicue narrative used to explain the creation of Huitzilopochtli primarily makes visible her destructive/militaristic aspect and overshadows the fertility/life giving characteristics of the deity.¹⁶ Other versions of the identity of the deity according to Anzaldúa and other scholars encapsulate Cihuacoatl, Tonantsi, and Coatlalopeuh.¹⁷ 

In Post-Modern/Contemporary times, Coatlicue was encountered by Anzaldúa in New

York City in the 1980s. Her encounter with an archeological object visualizes features of Coatlicue as described/written about in her book Borderlands in 1987. It visualizes for Anzaldúa an entrance into the history of her cultural identity that was made possible through the sculptural representation of Coatlicue at the American Museum of Natural History of New York.¹⁸ As part of the Anthropological branch of the museum, the object in its American institutional context allowed Anzaldúa an opportunity to be used for her own cultural perceptions in the United States, outside Mexican political geography. 

In Chapter 3, Entering the Serpent and Chapter 4: Herencia de Coatlicue/The Coatlicue State, she provides a brief historical context for the stone sculpture, and she begins to theorize about Mexican cultural identity. Anzaldúa perceives Coatlicue as a depiction of the contradictory (Figure 2). She makes this interpretation from the visible integration of reptilian (snakes and scales) and avian (claws and feathers) motifs carved in the stone sculpture. She interprets them as a visualization of heaven and earth, although she is not alone in this interpretation.¹⁹ The duality and hybrid nature of Coatlicue inspired Anzaldúa to theorize about her personal reality of living between Mexican and American culture in Texas.

         For Anzaldúa, the physical material object visualized immaterial ways of being. Her writing on the immaterial properties of Coatlicue were prompted by a physical manifestation.

The physical object was only a doorway into non-physical dimensions. She explores the nonphysical through the spiritual and mythological contexts attached to the physical object. 

            I interpret Castillo-Deball as focusing primarily on the physical object/manifestation of Coatlicue  due to the scale of its three-dimensional re(presentation) in solid fiberglass-resin modules, as opposed to the disruption of the gallery space created by the museum panels on the walls. By disruption of gallery space, I refer to a physical obstacle in one’s path of movement or sight. The museum panels parallel to the walls in the dark exhibition setting are easy to be ignored due to their polite presentation of cultural data. The sculpture on the other hand, demands attention. It is larger than most humans, impedes one’s path of vision and movement inside the gallery, it. The museum label panel provides a version of the myth with no external sources.²⁰ She displays it by 3 lithographs which depict different aesthetic representations of the stone sculpture 2-Dimensionally on paper (Figure 7). Her 3-dimensional aesthetic interpretation points to a moment in the micro-history of the visibility of the archeological object Coatlicue during the 1800s. 

Although the scale, shape and relief-aesthetics of the contemporary and ancient physical representation of Coatlicue appear the same, the interior and in-between is only existent in the contemporary re(production) (Figure 8). Castillo-Deball’s focus within this particular time of the narrative of the object Coatlicue is the physical un-earthing of the sculpture.²¹ This is the point in the narrative of the object Mariana Castillo-Deball’s contemporary sculpture No Solid Form Can

Contain You (2010) begins to engage with.²² 

I interpret the empty space created by No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) as a container for a mythological presence, an essence which is not bound to material origin (Figure 9). The removal/negation of the solid form, which could have been created with the fiberglass cast, allows/opens the possibility to become a signifier for an imagination of a mythological deity which Anzaldua writes. I contend that Castillo-Deball (re)presents her account of Coatlicue through a lack of solid matter, to emphasize that Coatlicue exists as an idea/myth/concept before existing as a singular solid object. The non-physical manifestation of Coatlicue as a myth is attached to the contemporary (re)production regardless of its relationship to an “original” object.²³ In this interpretation, within the title of the sculpture is No Solid Form Can Contain You, I interpret “You” to be Coatlicue, and it attaches, as a myth, to an archeological object with a complex role/part in the construction of Mexican cultural identity. 

The archeological narrative of the object is entangled with issues of religious and political censorship within Mexican culture/history. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish in Mexico in the 1500s, Coatlicue was believed to be used as a spiritual/ritual object representing a philosophical, political, and social stylization of the duality of fertility and death within the

Aztec’s cult around the harmony of the Environmental processes between the sky, earth and wind. ²⁴ No Solid Form Can Contain You re-interprets the function of the art object by reproducing an object intended for spiritual/mythological purposes into an object intended for multicultural historical education through its materiality and installation in a public cultural institution. Through a Nepantilist framework, the sculpture becomes “border art,” which Anzaldúa defines as the reproduction of indigenous/pre-colonial visual culture that resists corporate culture by superseding the pictorial.²⁵ It does so by hybridizing aspects of ancestral and contemporary Mexican cultural identity within North America through Castillo-Deball’s sculptural and textual re(presentation) in the context of global contemporary art that makes visible dominant and suppressed cultures.²⁶  

Anzaldúa was influenced by the geographical earth by her inhabiting an area that although geographically connected, is politically divided. Anzaldúa uses archeological imagery such as Coatlicue to theorize the politics of the separation of space in the context of encountering Coatlicue in New York City instead of Mexico City. When studying the contemporary sculpture No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) with Nepantilism, I consider how Castillo-Deball also was thinking similarly in materializing cultural hybridization through the presentation the archeological and spiritual/mythical contexts attached to the formal exterior aesthetics reproduced in fiberglass-resin.

Castillo-Deball exhibited the modules in a horizontal way to simulate the moment of encounter with Coatlicue in the 1790s – early 1800s when it was unearthed in Mexico City square. Castillo-Deball’s techniques and aesthetics create a version of the archeological object Coatlicue which re-configures the formal and conceptual qualities of the concept and material archeological form representative of Coatlicue. The artist exhibited the contemporary simulation of Coatlicue in a horizontal manner because it was the orientation it was encountered in its unearthing in the 1800s. Before it was underground, the sculpture was intended to be viewed in a temple vertically. Coatlicue was documented in written text to have been shown in its PreCortesian/Pre-Colonial context upright, with the longest/widest side of the piece in the air, and the cylindrical base on the earth.²⁷ In its contemporary exhibition, No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) reaches at/right above human waist height when it is installed directly on the ground, if it were installed vertically, it would be about 8 feet tall (Figure 11). To see all the way into the sculpture, one must bend over, or kneel. The method of display of the sculpture makes it uncomfortable for the viewer to peer into in-between spaces but it does not impede it.  If the sculpture were displayed on a platform or short pedestal, it would have made looking into the sculpture more inviting. For one to be at eye level with the interior of the sculpture the viewer must adjust to the low height of the sculpture. In the position of peering into the hollow space of No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010), the art work Do ut Des (2xxx – 2019) is behind the viewer, Teozacoalco Map (2019) is beneath, and the remaining 3 pieces Coatlicue (2010), Mathematical Distortions (2XXX) and Stela K Quirigua (2XXX)  in the exhibition are ahead of the piece (Figure 5). 

In Mariana Castillo-Deball’s industrial reproduction of Coatlicue, she omits traits/features/aspects of the archeological/spiritual object. The stone monolith of Coatlicue is carved in the round, every inch of the stone is assigned an aesthetic function. The bottom of the sculpture when it was displayed in the pre-colonial contexts in Mexico, had another earth deity called “Tlaltecuhtli” carved at the base/bottom of it. This side would have not been visible when it was displayed upright and was meant to be in direct contact with the surface of the earth. In the fiber-glass resin simulation Castillo-Deball produced, she omits recreating the base of the original stone sculpture, doing so allows the interior hollow space of the modular cast to be revealed (Figure 8). The artist omits a version of the archeological past and refigures an ancient mythological narrative into a contemporary conversation on visibility and invisibility of objects of collective histories/cultural identity. This relates to Anzaldua’s work because she presents two perspectives simultaneously. 

I looked at the in-between space of the sculpture as exhibited in New York in 2019, as opposed to comparing how it had been exhibited before. My experience with No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) expanded my understanding of my personal Mexican cultural identity by giving me access to an archeological object by simulating a (re)presentation of the mythological deity which visualizes new possibilities of meanings through a material spatial aesthetic language in the contemporary. 

The casting techniques used by Castillo-Deball have produced a fiberglass-resin sculpture that when assembled, creates an open disruption of space. No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) takes up a singular 3-dimensional space in a gallery at the New Museum (Figure 12). It is scaled to be a replica which measures about 99 inches long, 48 inches high, and 48 inches wide. The imagery and texture on each modular plastic piece is made to mimic the imagery and texture of Coatlicue in such a precise way that replicas can be cast from the mold. No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) occupies a space in the South Eastern center which is directly in view from both entrances. It disrupts the gallery space by its location in line with the entrances and the middle of the gallery. The fiberglass resin plastic parts are assembled into aspherical rectangular cube which has one large opening on the side closest to the East wall, facing the South East corner of the gallery.

The sculpture functions as a vessel for physical space when all the modules are held together with bolts and washers. Her use of physical space in the three dimensions creates a nonphysical visual presence which interrupts the contemporary present. The interruption of the present is achieved through No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010)’s lightweight deconstructable mold which creates a hollow space (Figure 8, 9 and 10). 

My encounter with No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) created a moment where my everyday mode of perception broke and created a shift.²⁸ This industrially produced sculptural plastic object visualized the interior of a solid stone spiritual and archeological monolith. Anzaldúa says that a shift in perception is when one begins to see through things and between depths and become aware of the soul/self.²⁹ By looking at No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) as a contemporary cultural object, it created a shift in my way of perceiving an existing archeological object by hybridizing spatially how it has been used in two contexts within Mexican culture. 

 

POLITICAL SPACE

I interpret Castillo-Deball’s decision to visualize the method of production used to create No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) as an aesthetic tool to make visible the various entanglements that Mexican cultural objects have with methods and processes of reproduction.

The sculpture functions as a hollow mold which can potentially re-produce the stone monolith.

Gloria’s ideas of Nepantilism tells me that the technique of the sculpture is a visualization of the hybridization of Mexican and  American culture. In this section I will focus on the way the method of production creates a political space by addressing its physical materiality. In the previous section above, I wrote about the space between the archeological and the spiritual/mythological. In this section, I think about the way the materiality of the sculpture fosters a political space where Mexican and American culture overlap. 

The original sculpture No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) was cast from, is a freestanding in-the-round carved stone called andesite, which is a type of volcanic stone. Unlike the original it emulates, it was made in an additive manner by overlaying sheets of a plastic-based media called Fiberglass.³⁰ The plastic cast is assembled into a singular form, which when properly sealed, can become a mold which can cast and reproduce more replicas of Coatlicue. The form of the contemporary structure emerged from the solid surface of a pre-existing subtractive stone form. Although the archeological and the contemporary object emulate a similar form, the media they are made of highlights their separation through time. This observation is important because I interpret Castillo-Deball’s use of plastic as media which represent America’s commodification of Mexican culture. Rather than replicating Coatlicue as a solid form, the use of plastic to create a mold gives a contemporary identity to the ancient Mexica monolith.

            Plastic(s) is a term applied to an array of natural and synthetic materials which exist in different forms, properties and appearances. The use of plastic by artists has been done since the 20^th century.³¹ It became more prevalent around the 1950s. The variation of the arrangement of the polymers determine key properties of the material such as malleability and rigidity.³² The use of plastic and man-made polymer technology was made popular through the push towards industry and mass-manufacturing which begun around the 1900s-1930s and become more commonly used by artists as a structural material in the 2^nd half of the 20^th century. Plastic materials are grouped into two classes. One of the classes is thermoplastics, which are polymers that are shaped through heating and pressure.³³ The second kind of plastic materials are thermosetting materials, which are the type of materials the sculpture No Solid Form Can

Contain You (2010) was made with. Thermosets used to make No Solid Form Can Contain You

(2010) are epoxy resins which function as adhesives for the glass reinforced plastic (GRP). Glass Reinforced plastic or Fiberglass is polyester resin reinforced with glass fibers.³⁴ Fiberglass-resin is made of two different kinds of polymers. One is a liquid catalyst which is a media that binds the second material, glass-fiber laminate sheets. Together, they create a rigid, solid lightweight structure that sets to the form and texture of the object being molded, in this case, the original Coatlicue sculpture. ³⁵ This method of casting allows for complex structures to be cast. Overtime, the fiberglass-resin interacts with the oxygen and light in the atmosphere and degrade over time, becoming brittle due to its loss of strength and yellowing in color.³⁶ The technique allows for the creation of an interior and exterior translation of the carved solid stone surface of Coatlicue that is created through the colors marbled on the translucent fiberglass-resin plastic modules. The bottom of the sculpture appears to be suspended in its many shadows (Figure 6 and Figure 11).

The object and theory point to a tension in the way institutional replication of cultural objects extends their visibility but displaces them outside their original contexts. Anzaldúa’s Nepantilism theory shifts my focus to the pros and cons in the traveling of sculptural art objects from Mexico to the United States. Castillo-Deball’s visualization of the casting process was done to bring the public/viewer’s attention to a repeating story shared by archeological objects where they are replicated and reproduced by archeologists in different media. These replicas and reproductions of cultural objects are then exhibited in spaces even further removed than the site where the original archeological object functioned, was found, was studied, and was finally exhibited. An example of a removal of archeological objects from their physical geographical contexts can be the access of archeology and cultural objects offered by cultural institutions such as UNESCO, by means of virtual reality or augmented reality by means of digital simulations.³⁷ 

   The use of plastic as a media in No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) is seen through

Nepantilism as a signifier for the commodification of cultural diversity in the “neo-colonial.”³⁸  An example of the commercialization of cultural diversity Anzaldúa provides, is the way in museums in the United States such as Denver Museum of Natural History reproduce “popculture rip-offs.” ³⁹ In Chapter 3 “Border Art” of her book Light in the Dark, Anzaldúa writes about her visit to the museum gift shop after her visit to the ticketed exhibition of “AZTEC: The World of Moctezuma” on its opening day September 26, 1992.⁴⁰ In the shop, she saw mass manufactured “feathers, paper flowers, and ceramic statues of fertility goddesses sell for ten times what they sell for in Mexico.” ⁴¹ Alongside the commercialization of ethnic culture through material mass-production, Anzaldúa points out the way Mexican culture is sold outside of the museum immaterially on TV, billboards, and even the cantinas in airport corridors where you can drink margaritas. ⁴² In this chapter she criticizes the way American cultural authorities colonize Mexican cultural identity by the way they exhibit Mexican cultural objects. 

Her experience of the Denver Museum of Natural History’s simulation of pre-colonial Mexican

cultural contexts put Anzaldua in a state of Nepantla. For her, the exhibition:

 …enacts a psychosis of sorts, implying that all Aztecs are dead and only inhabit prehistory. It induces a double beingness in me: feeling my Mexican indigenous aspects represented while at the same time feeling these parts of myself “disappeared.” ⁴³

Her issue was the way in which the museum presented pre-colonial objects as belonging to a culture which no longer exists, but it never seized to exist. Anzaldua’s writings of her experience of the exhibition in 1992 push me to view Castillo-Deball’s sculpture as re-contextualizing Mexican cultural identity in a way that questions simultaneously colonial and pre-colonial ways of being. No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010)’s method of production of casting and moldmaking, paired with the media of plastic (versus steel, marble or wood) emphasize the commercialization of Mexican culture through its mass (re)production in the United States.

Anzaldúa refers to commercialization of Mexican culture as a “neo-colonialism.” Although No Solid Form Can Contain You can be used to mass-manufacture replicas of Coatlicue, in its installation in 2019, I view it as a hybrid cultural contemporary art object. It brings into the physical present the discussion of the role of archeology and spirituality/mythology in the construction of cultural identity. In its installation in 2019, No Solid Form Can Contain You

(2010) pushes me to consider the way America’s commodification of Mexican cultural objects, which share archeological and spiritual/mythological contexts, re-interprets their meanings to represent American versions of Mexican culture. 

 

CONCLUSION

I restricted my physical area of study within North American because it was the geographical space in which the original Coatlicue Post-Classic Monolith was created from/within and currently resides, and the same geographical space No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) has been exhibited in various regions on the same continent. I feel it is important for me to make this distinction because Mariana Castillo-Deball has exhibited the relationship Mexican cultural identity has to objects, in particular archaeological objects, in multiple museum settings overseas in Europe.⁴⁴ 

I focus my discussion to North America because of the complicated present state of politics between Mexico and the United States. Using Gloria Anzaldúa’s theory of Nepantilism, I investigate Mexican cultural identity as unbounded from a singular geographical site of origin. Crossing the Northern Mexican border, my research takes me two specific geographical sites New York in 2019, when studying No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010), and Austin, Texas when studying the Gloria Anzaldúa Archivesin 2020. ⁴⁵  I synthesize visual and literary data on the same topic found in foreign geographical contexts to make sense of Mexican cultural identity. Under Nepantilism, Anzaldúa reminds me that cultural identity is not ground to a singular geography, it is fluid and constantly changing. As seen in the sculpture, every time the exhibition context changes across time in cultural spaces throughout North America, a different interpretation can be made from the materials of the exact same sculptural object. 

I look further within space by looking at middle space where the two nations overlap. To do so I use the writings by a cultural theorist who uses the geographical space in which she lived in as a resource for her cultural theories as opposed to constructing them primarily around an archeological object. I study this object with my personal hybrid cultural lens as a self-identified Mexican-American woman.⁴⁶ My place of origin is the present-day part of geography referred to the United States of America. This country shares the same North American geographies yet opposing cultural understandings around the meaning, exhibition, and purpose of art objects.

Through the writings of Gloria Anzaldúa, the bi-national art made between the two nations of

Mexico and USA can be referred to as “Border Arte” or “Border Art”.⁴⁷ This type of art is a product of the mixture of multicultural historical/cultural contexts which influence one’s identity and perceptions. After my application of Nepantilism to No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) I interpret it as a sculptural visualization of the hybridization of Mexican cultural identity across spaces and time.

The focus of this paper was not to define Mexican cultural, instead I use an understanding of Mexican culture sourced from my own personal lived experience within it since birth. In my experiencing of Mexican culture, like Anzaldúa and Castillo-Deball, I was not bound to a specific space within the nation of Mexico inside North American geographies. I, like the two makers and the sculpture, have moved across the North American geographies in different shapes and sizes through time, which amalgamated and molded my malleable Mexican identity as an immaterial form which is connected to the geographical earth environmentally, aesthetically, spiritually and ancestrally. 

I studied a contemporary sculpture which functioned as an object of study that provided evidence on the relationship of Mexican cultural identity to space. The theorist I used created a theory between two nations on the same geographical space. Her theory pushed me to look at the many ways a contemporary art object can exist in space through time. No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) represented the malleability of Mexican cultural identity through geographical space when exhibited in cultural museums within two opposing nations.

Although No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) is in an American context, I study it as a cultural in-between space. Its previous exhibitions in Mexico 2006 and California in 2010 are united in its 2019 exhibition in a “global” cultural institution within North American geographies.⁴⁸ In this setting, No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) appears outside of its cultural context in a space of Nepantla which prompts fluid hybrid interpretations. 

            The significance of this exhibition of the object was its technique, which was further manipulated through its physical location, orientation, and place in space. I also studied this exhibition the most because it was the time and space, I was able to access it at, as opposed to past printed and digital manifestations. The original cultural object No Solid Form Can Contain

You (2010) simulates, is entangled in issues of visibility and invisibility within Mexican culture. The contemporary cultural object pushed me to raise questions on the visibility of spiritual and archeological cultural objects in the present and their authenticity and originality in a time of digital reproduction and fabrication. In this paper No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) is a culturally in-between contemporary art object where its technique, materiality, and spatial aesthetics present a cultural ecosystem of new meanings. Under a Nepantilism, the features of No Solid Form Can Contain You (2010) make visible the commodification, appropriation, and aesthetics of Mexican archeological cultural objects in exhibited space, between Spiritual/Archeological spaces and political space.

 

Works Cited

Acevedo, Esther. Hacia otra historia del arte en México. México, D.F.: Conaculta, 2001.

 

Aglio, Agostino. Exhibition at the Egyptian Hall Picadilly. Egyptian-Hall, London.

 

Alonso, A.M. (2004), Conforming Disconformity: “Mestizaje,” Hybridity, and the Aesthetics of Mexican Nationalism. Cultural Anthropology, 19: 459-490. doi:10.1525/can.2004.19.4.459

 

Amirsadeghi, Hossein, ed. Contemporary Art Mexico. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2014.

 

An Van, Hecke. “”Transgresión y rebeldía La Virgen de Guadalupe en el arte y la literatura de los chicanos”.” Amerika [En ligne] 4 (2011).

 

Ana María Carbonell. “From Llorona to Gritona: Coatlicue in Feminist Tales by Viramontes and Cisneros.” MELUS. 24 (2) (1999): 53-74.

 

Andrao, Amale, Akawi, and Caitlin Blanchfield. “The Arab City: Architecture and Representation.” New York: Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2016.

 

Antonio de León y Gama. Descripción histórica y cronológica de las dos piedras. México:

Porrúa. 1978.

 

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands = La frontera. 4th. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2007.

 

Anzaldúa, Gloria and AnaLouise Keating. The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader. Latin America Otherwise. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. 

 

Anzaldúa, Gloria. “Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers.” Benson Latin American Collection. Austin: University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin., n.d.

 

Anzaldúa, Gloria, and AnaLouise Keating. Light in the dark = Luz en lo oscuro : rewriting identity, spirituality, reality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.

 

Archer, Michael. Art since 1960. London: Thames and Hudson, 2015.

 

Barbara Wien, Galerie/Kunstbuchhandlung. Mariana Castillo-Deball. n.d.

http://www.barbarawien.de/artist.php?artist=8 (accessed October 2019).

 

Bhattacharya, Kakali. “Coloring Memories and Imaginations of ‘Home’: Crafting a

De/Colonizing Autoethnography.” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 18, no. 1 (February 2018): 9–15.

 

Bhattacharya, Kakali. “Performing Gender as “Third-World Other’’ in Higher Education: De/colonizing Transnational Feminist Possibilities.” Creative Approaches to Research 6 (2013): 30-47.

 

Borboa, Martín. Itzcóatl, Emperador Mexica. México, D.F. : Plaza y Valdés, 1997.

 

Broda, Johanna, David Carrasco, and Eduardo Matos Moctezuma. The Great Temple of Tenochtitlán: Center and Periphery in the Aztec World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.  

 

Brundage, Burr Cartwright. The Fifth Sun : Aztec Gods, Aztec World. The Texas Pan American Series. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979. 

 

Burland, C. A., and Werner Forman. Feathered Serpent and Smoking Mirror. New York: Putnam, 1975.

 

Butler, Judith, Neus Carbonell, and Meri Torras. Feminismos literarios. Madrid: Arco Libros, 1999.

 

Cameron, Fiona, and Sarah Kenderdine, ed. Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: A Critical Discourse. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2010.

 

Carril, Pilar, Michelle Suderman, Atl, Quinn Latimer, Adam Szymczyk, and Giorgio Agamben.

Olinka: o donde se crea el movimiento = or where movement is created. México, D.F.:

Fundación Olga y Rufino Tamayo : Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 2013.

 

Castillo-Deball, Mariana. 001 “Mariana Castillo-Deball: Finding Oneself Outside” Audio Guide: Introduction. 001. 2019.

 

Charla de la Artista Mexicana Mariana Castillo Deball. Performed by Mariana CASTILLODEBALL. Biblioteca TEOR/éTica, San José, Costa Rica. February 27, 2013.

 

Castillo-Deball, Mariana. Interview by Katie Guggenheim. Chisenhale Interviews: Mariana Castillo Deball Edited by Polly Staple. London: Chisenhale Gallery Interviews Series, (May 2013).

 

Castillo-Deball, Mariana. Finding Oneself Outside. New Museum, New York, 2019.

 

Castillo-Deball, Mariana. Kaleidoscopic Eye. Berlin: Bom Dia Boa Tarde Boa Noite, 2019.

 

Castillo-Deball, Mariana. Never Odd or Even. Berlin: Bom Dia Boa Tarde Boa Noite, 2011.

 

Castillo-Deball, Mariana. “No Solid Form Can Contain You.” New Museum. Finding Oneself Outside. New York, 2010.

 

Castillo-Deball, Mariana. Penser/Classer. Maastricht, Netherlands: Jan van Eyck Academie, 2002.

 

Castillo-Deball, Mariana. These Ruins You See. Berlin: Sternberg Press. , 2008.

 

Castillo-Deball, Mariana. and Irene Kopelman. Un Ojo, Dos Ojos, Tres Ojos. México, D.F.: Casa Vecina, 2012.

 

Castillo-Deball, Mariana. and Manuel Raeder. Uncomfortable objects: Mariana Castillo Deball. Berlin: Bom Dia Boa

Tarde Boa Noite, 2012.

 

Castillo-Deball, Mariana and Melanie Roumiguière. Mariana Castillo Deball – Parergon. Berlin: Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin., 2014.

 

Chisenhale Gallery. ARCHIVE : Mariana Castillo Deball. 2013.

https://chisenhale.org.uk/exhibition/mariana-castillo-deball/ (accessed July 26, 2017).

 

Dávila S., Arturo, Ana Castillo, and Gloria Anzaldúa. “Frontera Sin Fronteras: Introducción a La Poesía Mechicana.” Revista De Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana 38, no. 76 (2012): 335-60. Accessed May 1, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/23631241.

 

Debroise, Olivier, ed. La era de la discrepancia: arte y cultura visual en México, 1968-1997. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2006.

 

Dieckhoff, Alain, and Natividad Gutierrez, . Modern roots: studies of national identity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001.

 

Donahue-Wallace, Kelly. Art and architecture of viceregal Latin America, 1521-1821. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008.

 

Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank, “Coatlicue,” in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed February 20,

2020, https://smarthistory.org/coatlicue/.

 

Dumbadze, Alexander Blair, and Suzanne Perling Hudson. Contemporary art: 1989 to the Present. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.

 

Fajardo-Hill, Cecilia. The Invisibility of Latin American Women Artists: Problematizing Art Historical and Curatorial Practices. Essay, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles: Digital Archive, 2019, 21-27.

 

Fajardo-Hill, Cecilia, Andrea Giunta, and Rodrigo Alonso. Radical women: Latin American art, 1960-1985. Los Angeles: Hammer Museum, 2017.

 

Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta. Rethinking the Political: The Sacred, Aesthetic Politics, and the Collège de Sociologie. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011.

 

Falcón, Sylvanna,M. “Transnational Feminism as a Paradigm for Decolonizing the Practice of Research: Identifying Feminist Principles and Methodology Criteria for US-Based Scholars.” Frontiers (University of Nebraska Press)

37, no. 1 (2016): 174-194.

 

Ferguson, Russell. Out there: marginalization and contemporary cultures. New York, N.Y.: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1999.

 

Fitch, Melissa A., ed. Studies in Latin American Popular Culture. Vol. 29. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.

 

Florentine codex. Tempe: Arizona State University Hispanic Research Center. 2008.

 

Frank, Patrick. Readings in Latin American Modern Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

 

Fusco, Coco. The bodies that were not ours: and other writings. London: Routledge, published in collaboration with inIVA, Institute of International Visual Arts., 2001.

 

Gallo, Rubén. New tendencies in Mexican art: the 1990s. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

 

Giunta, Andrea. “Feminist Disruptions in Mexican Art, 1975 – 1987.” Artelogie ( École des hautes études en sciences sociales), October 2013: 23.

 

Glaser, Jane R., and Artemis A. Zenetou. Gender perspectives: essays on women in museums. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994.

 

Graham, Ian. 2002. Alfred Maudslay and the Maya: a biography. Norman, Okla: University of Oklahoma Press.

 

Gutiérrez, Natividad. Nationalist myths and ethnic identities: indigenous intellectuals and the Mexican state. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

 

Gutiérrez -Chong, Natividad. “Patriotic Thoughts or Intuition: Roles of Women in Mexican Nationalisms.” Nations and Nationalism 12, no. 2 (April 2006): 339-358.

 

Hames-Garcia, Michael. “How to Tell a Mestizo from an Enchirito®: Colonialism and National Culture in the Borderlands.” Diacritics 30, no. 4 (2000): 102-22.

 

Herrán, Saturnino. Nuestros Dioses Antiguos No. 1, La Coatlicue. Charcoal on paper., 88.5cm x

62.5cm. 1914.

 

Hoffmann, Jens. Show Time: The Most Influential Exhibitions of Contemporary Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 2017.

 

Hutchinson, EPWStudio / Maris. “Exhibition View of Finding Oneself Outside.” New Museum.

Photography. New York, 2019.

 

Hutchinson, EPWStudio / Maris. Installation View of No Solid Form Can Contain You. New Museum, New York.

 

Ian Graham. Alfred Maudslay and the Maya: a biography. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. 2002.

 

Johnson, Kaytie, ed. Strange Currencies: Art & Action in Mexico City, 1990-2000. Philadelphia: The Galleries at Moore College of Art & Design, 2015.

 

Jones, Elizabeth, Elvin Jones, Jessica Olson, Rebecca Teale, and Lauren. Curtright. Gloria Anzaldúa. Essay, Digital Conservancy, University of Minnesota, Voices from the Gaps, 2005.

 

Karnes, Andrea. Inside out: themes in art since 1990. Fort Worth: Modern Art Musem of Forth Worth, 2013.

 

Keating, AnaLouise. “”From Borderlands and New Mestizas to Nepantlas and Nepantleras: Anzaldúan Theories for Social Change.” Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge 4, no. 3 (2006).

 

Klein, Cecelia F. “A New Interpretation of the Aztec Statue Called Coatlicue, “Snakes-HerSkirt”.” Ethnohistory 55, no. 2 (Spring, 2008): 229.

doi:http://libproxy.library.unt.edu:2126/10.1215/00141801-2007-062. https://libproxy.library.unt.edu/login?url=https://libproxy.library.unt.edu:2165/docview/2 09752165?accountid=7113.

 

Kurimanzutto. Mariana Castillo-Deball. n.d. http://www.kurimanzutto.com/en/artists/marianacastillo-deball (accessed October 2019).

 

Lara, Irene. “Goddess of the Américas in the Decolonial Imaginary: Beyond the Virtuous Virgen/Pagan Puta Dichotomy.” Feminist Studies 34, no. 1/2 (2008): 99-127.

 

Lazcano, Lourdes Parra. “Rosario Castellanos, Entre México e Israel.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 95, no. 7 (2018): 783-799.

doi:http://libproxy.library.unt.edu:2126/10.3828/bhs.2018.46.

https://libproxy.library.unt.edu/login?url=https://libproxy.library.unt.edu:2165/docview/2 075717116?accountid=7113.

 

Léon y Gama, Antonio de. Descripción histórica y cronológica de las dos piedras. México: Miguel Angel Porrúa, 1978.

 

León-Portilla, Miguel, and José Jorge Klor de Alva. The Aztec image of self and society: an introduction to Nahua culture. .Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992.

 

Lieberman, Shannon M. “Cost/Benefit: Assessing Feminism’s Impact on Museum Practice.” Art Journal, Summer 2015: 88-90.

 

Lookofsky, Sarah. “Mariana Castillo Deball.” Artforum International (Proquest) 53, no. 3 (November 2014): 298-299.

 

Lugones, Maria. “Toward a Decolonial Feminism.” Hypatia 25, no. 4 (2010): 742-59.

 

Miralles-Ostos, Juan. La Malinche: raíz de México. México, D.F.: Tusquets Editores México, 2004. “Mariana Castillo-Deball.” MOLAA Musings. Museum of Latin American Art, June 21, 2010.

https://molaa.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/mariana–castillo–deball/.

 

“Milking the Legend of a Weeping Apparition.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, January 13, 2002. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la–xpm–2002–jan–13–me–22382–story.html.

 

“Mission & Values.” Mission & Values :: New Museum. Accessed March 31, 2020.

https://www.newmuseum.org/pages/view/values.

 

Montaño, Hector. Exhibition view of Coatlicue. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Ciudad de Mexico.

 

Mosquera, Gerardo. “From Latin American Art to Art from Latin America. [Original title: Del Arte Latinoamericano al arte desde AmErica Latina.].” ArtNexus 48 (2003): 70-74.

 

Muller, Nat. A Poetic Sharjah Biennial for a World in Turmoil. May 12, 2017.

https://hyperallergic.com/378399/a-poetic-sharjah-biennial-for-a-world-in-turmoil/ (accessed 2019).

 

Mundy, Barbara and Castillo-Deball, Mariana. Mariana Castillo Deball in Conversation with Barbara Mundy. New Museum, New York. March 3, 2019.

 

Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, and Museo Amparo (Puebla, Mexico). Resisting the present: Mexico, 2000-2012. Barcelona: Editorial RM Verlag, 2011.

 

“Museo Nacional De Antropología.” Lugares INAH. Accessed November 6, 2019.

https://www.lugares.inah.gob.mx/es/museos–inah/exposiciones/6021–951–mexica–1200d–c–1521–d–c.html?expo_id=6016&lugar_id=471.

 

Obrist, Hans Ulrich. Conversations | Artistic Practice | The Artist as Archeologist. Performed by Jumana Manna, Mariana Castillo-Deball, Susan Hiller, Peter Wächtler, Simone Fattal and Rossella Biscotti. Art Basel, Miami. June 20, 2015.

 

Pullen, D., Michael Wigginton, Jonathan Stephenson, Claire Catterall, and Yvonne Shashoua.

“Plastic.” Grove Art Online. 2003; Accessed 21 Feb. 2020. https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao9781884446054–e–7000068062.  

Ramírez, Mari Carmen, Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, Héctor Olea, María C. Gaztambide, and Melina Kervandjian. 2012. Resisting Categories: Latin American And/or Latino? Critical Documents of 20th-Century Latin American and Latino Art. Houston: Yale University Press. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=538707&scope=site  

 

Ríos-Bustamante, Antonio José, and Christine Marin. Latinos in museums: a heritage reclaimed. Malabar, FLA: Krieger Publishing, 1998.

 

Roelstraete, Dieter. The Way of the Shovel: On the Archaeological Imaginary in Art. Chicago:

Museum of Contemporary Art in association with the University of Chicago Press, 2013.

 

Rubén Gallo. New Tendencies in Mexican Art: the 1990s. London, New York, Shanghai:

Palgrave Macmillan. 2004.

 

Salvadori, Barbara, Emma Cantisani, Maria Perla Colombini, and Cecilia Gaia Rachele Tognon.

“Painted Fiberglass-Reinforced Contemporary Sculpture: Investigating Composite Materials, Techniques and Conservation Using a Multi-Analytical Approach.” Applied Spectroscopy 70, no. 1 (January 2016): 174–85. doi:10.1177/0003702815616736. 

 

Séjourné, Laurette. Pensamiento Y Religión En El México Antiguo. Breviarios Del Fondo De Cultura Económica. [Pensée des anciens Mexicains. Spanish]. 9th ed. Vol. 128. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1990.

 

Shohat, Ella, ed. Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age. New York:

New Museum of Contemporary Art, 2001.

 

Sotomayor, Leslie C. ” “Uncrating Josefina Aguilar: Autohistoria and Autohistoria-Teoría in Feminist Curating of a Muñecas Series.”.” Studies in Art Education 60, no. 2 (2019): 132143.

 

Stephenson, Jonathan. “Fibreglass.” Grove Art Online. 2003; Accessed 21 Feb. 2020.

https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao9781884446054–e–7000028156. 

 

Taylor, Brandon. Contemporary Art: Art Since 1970. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2012.

 

The College of Liberal Arts The University of Texas at Austin.” UT College of Liberal Arts,

March 20, 2020. https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/languages/latin–american–studies/nahuatl–.php  

 

Vasconcelos, José. La raza cósmica. México: Editorial Porrúa., 2010.

 

Vélasquez-Garcia, Erik. Nueva historia general de México. México, D.F.: El Colegio de México, 2014.

 

Vivó, Jorge A. México Prehispánico, Culturas, Deidades, Monumentos. México: Editorial E. Hurtado, 1946. 

 

Wallis, Brian, ed. Art after Modernism: Rethinking Representation. New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art., 1984.

 

Wall Text: No Solid Form Can Contain You, Winter/Spring 2019 by Mariana Castillo-Deball. In exhibition “Finding Oneself Outside” at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY.  Seen on: February 28, 2017.

 

Wall Text: The Story of Coatlicue and Coyolxauhqui, Winter/Spring 2019 by Mariana CastilloDeball. In exhibition “Finding Oneself Outside” at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY.  Seen on: February 28, 2017.

 

Widholm, Julie Rodrigues, and Carlos Amorales. Escultura social: a new generation of art from Mexico City. Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in assc. with Yale University Press, 2007.

 

–