Altepetl

“Altepetl” refers to an Aztec term, meaning ‘water-mountain,’ the ideal environment upon which a civilization flourishes. Stefania Strouza uses the word to refer to the story of Mexico City in relation to water, colonialism, and climate change. Inspired by the animist representations of the environment in pre-Columbian maps and the feminized deities of the earth and the river waters, the sculpture takes the form of an imagined, three-dimensional map of the antique 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 the texture of crocodile skin represents the female goddess of the earth in Aztec cosmology while its jaded color points to Chalchiuhtlicue, namely ‘She of the Jade Skirt,’ the Aztec goddess of water. The silica beads lying above the skin, used commonly nowadays as a synthetic substance for desiccation, trace the original form of the lake system of Mexico City before its drainage by the Spaniards. Finally, breasts made of local obsidian mark the sculpture as symbols of the volcanic terrain surrounding the city, but also point to the femicides in contemporary Mexico.

The work was developed during the BKA artist-in-residence program in Mexico City in 2018 with the support of the Austrian Cultural Forum.