Grandfather Sun, Grandmother Moon: Wixarika Arts of Modern West Mexico

The Wixarika (pronounced wee shah ree kah; also known as the Huichol) people live in the Sierra Madre mountains of western Mexico, where the modern states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Zacatecas, and Durango meet. Their cultural roots reach back several thousand years, and they have maintained many traditions despite strong colonial, national, and now global pressures that have threatened them. Making and selling their art, bead-and yarn-work especially, has helped the Wixarika sustain their ways and yet accommodate change and participate in the world economy. They sell versions of their sacred objects to collectors and tourists as a way to avoid having to move to the cities and risk losing their beliefs and practices. This exhibition highlights their beliefs as seen through their ritual and secular arts, created as they negotiate the modern era in all its complexity. Above all, the Wixarika strive to find balance within themselves, between humans and nature, and with the spirit world. Their ritual life is oriented toward maintaining harmony. All phenomena are considered interrelated—particularly humans, maize, deer, and peyote—and even their physical forms are interchangeable. For instance, in mythic times peyote cactus became deer—the cactus is now “hunted” on the annual pilgrimage to the northern deserts. Shamans (mara’akame) mediate the natural balancing of the cosmic realms and the transformations that occur in other realities. Art is used in rituals as well as in the depiction of myths and concepts, and bright colors are meant to attract the attention of the spirits that are believed to control the rains, the crops, time, the sun and moon, and so on. Made by both men and women artists, prayer bowls carry offerings and requests to the invisible powers, while yarn paintings tell the stories, dreams, and visions that also relate to the Other Side. In recent times, the Wixarika have created decorated masks—based on face painting traditions—for sale to outsiders. Although the traditional symbols may remain on these pieces, artists have transformed them toward economic ends.