Antonio Pichill\u00e1 Quiaca\u00edn is a prolific artist, working primarily with painting, sculpture, and textiles, sometimes in the studio but often creating large-scale installations that reach out, protrude, and intersect with the surface of the lake. Taught to weave and create his own textiles by his mother, he has built upon that craft to develop abstract compositions that dialogue with modern and contemporary art while remaining anchored within Maya cosmovisi\u00f3n<\/em>. His actions take place almost exclusively around Lake Atitl\u00e1n in the Guatemalan highlands, a space for healing, where symbolic gestures such as knotting and enveloping unfold. Water occupies a central position within Maya culture, as an element necessary to the perpetuation of life, and also as a space for transition, a locus where the contemporary and the ancestral are intertwined. The Popol Vuh, the foundational Maya K\u2019iche\u2019 text, begins by majestically narrating the creation of the world from the primordial waters: \u201cAlone lies the expanse of the sea, along with the womb of all the sky\u2026\u201d Lake Atitl\u00e1n is considered sacred, an animated, maternal presence, that is endowed with personhood. It has soul. It is therefore no coincidence that its waters have nourished art practices such as Pichill\u00e1\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In July 2018, I was invited by Pichill\u00e1 and fellow artist Benvenuto Chavajay Ixtetel\u00e1 to participate in the Vienal del Lago in the town of San Pedro La Laguna, on the shores of Lake Atitl\u00e1n. The two artists organized studio visits and took me on short trips to explore the region. Perhaps the most unexpected, and humbling, experience came when I was granted permission to visit Maxim\u00f3n (San Sim\u00f3n) in Santiago Atitl\u00e1n, a sacred figure commonly referred to as the abuelo<\/em> (grandfather), deeply revered by the communities living around the lake. The Vienal del Lago takes the B from bienal<\/em> (biennial) and replaces it with a \u201cV\u201d from vida<\/em> (life), because, as Chavajay explains, \u201ces m\u00e1s importante la vida as\u00ed, que el arte en s\u00ed<\/em>\u201d (life as it is, is more important than art in and of itself). The letter also becomes a symbol, since it references the inverted shape of the three volcanoes flanking Lake Atitl\u00e1n, mirrored on the water\u2019s surface. Chavajay told me that for him art is a means of entering into a dialogue with the \u201cOccident.\u201d By contrast to most international biennials, the Vienal is a permanent event that develops from a relationship of equivalence between art and life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During my six-week residency, I became acquainted with a great number of local artists and artisans and was able to observe the range, diversity, and efflorescence of local art and culture. It soon became clear that certain inherited notions about the autonomy of art, specifically Western or \u201cOccidental\u201d art (as Chavajay would put it), were not just irrelevant in this context, but obsolete. The artist recalled that when he first asked his father about the meaning of art, he was taken aback by his silence: the term did not exist in Tz\u2019utujil. Yet Chavajay knew from a young age that within his community, art was everywhere, ingrained in things and gestures alike. Since then, he noted, his practice\u200a\u2014\u200ahis \u201ccontemporary artistic gestures\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200ahas been based on his father\u2019s silence.2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - Interview with the artist, July 2021.<\/span> The Maya worldview encompasses open definitions, loosening the stern distinctions made between animate and inanimate matter, things and people, ancestral cultural practices and mundane, everyday activities. The Vienal is embedded within this context, and therefore isn\u2019t contingent upon the curating of exhibitions or the planning of special events. Rather, it unfolds alongside the participants\u2019 engagements and exchanges with the community; it ebbs and flows. Indeed, \u201cflow\u201d is probably the word that would best capture the feeling of my experience there, since the greatest presence in the Vienal is the lake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chavajay\u2019s practice is deeply rooted within the life of his community, his ancestral culture, yet it projects outward, seeking points of contact and connection beyond, including with the fractured entity that we call the \u201cart world\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200athe world as art, art by relation to the world. The work entails what might be called a social mission. It seeks to uncover zones of friction, and also overlap, between ancestral culture and modernity. For several years, Chavajay has been involved in an ongoing project titled El retorno de las almas<\/em> (The Return of the Souls), which deals with repatriating artefacts removed from indigenous communities by force, challenging institutions that continue to perpetuate colonialist attitudes, and calling out the art world for its complacency (if not outright hypocrisy). In 2021, working with local leaders and community groups, he managed to persuade governmental authorities to return the seat of Atanasio Tzul from the Museo Nacional de Historia in Guatemala City to its rightful place in Totonicap\u00e1n. Tzul, a Maya K\u2019iche\u2019 leader, had organized a major indigenous uprising against the Spanish Crown in 1820, declaring independence, which led to his governance over the region for a period of twenty-nine days.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Notably, this was the first successful independence movement in the region. The Central American Federation, of which Guatemala was a member at the time, declared independence from Spain only in 1821.<\/span> Previously, in 2013, Chavajay had initiated a campaign to rename Guatemala\u2019s national stadium in honour of an indigenous athlete whose name was altered from Doroteo Guamuch Flores to Mateo Flores to hide that very identity. Tzul\u2019s seat and Doroteo Guamuch\u2019s legacy\u200a\u2014\u200aas Chavajay sees it\u200a\u2014\u200awere not in their place. Returning their souls therefore became a necessary act. One might consider these actions through the lens of reparative justice: in identifying objects and symbols that have been usurped or displaced, he seeks to heal the wounds of history, to recuperate from loss. The significance of water, its physical and conceptual proximity\u200a\u2014\u200athe stream, the lake, the ocean\u200a\u2014\u200amight be interpreted in a symbolic sense here, as a conduit, an intermediary presence. Read in this vein, El retorno de las almas<\/em> performs a symbolic undoing of Columbus\u2019s voyage, reversing the centuries of plunder and devastation that ensued. Indeed, healing is central to the practices of both Chavajay and Pichill\u00e1, as they attempt to deal with\u200a\u2014\u200aas Chavajay would say\u200a\u2014\u200athe chasm between worlds, the colonial wound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of the artists who live and work on the shores of Lake Atitl\u00e1n have explored the meaning of water\u200a\u2014\u200aas medium, as theme\u200a\u2014\u200ain their work. Manuel Chavajay, for instance, has developed a series of works in various media, including watercolour, acrylic, photography, and video, depicting uncanny encounters in aquatic settings. Here, water becomes a vehicle, a means of transiting between worlds, playing with appearance; in addition to fulfilling its function as a primary means of subsistence, necessary to life. In Jikonriil\u2019\/Tensi\u00f3n<\/em> (2017), we watch two men paddling to move their canoes in opposite directions. The boats are tied to each other, however, so each rower only manages to advance slightly, while the other takes a brief respite. The men are bound together, literally and figuratively, their equivalent yet oppositional efforts striking some sort of balance by keeping them in place. The piece speaks to Guatemala\u2019s decades-long armed conflict and its consequences, pointing to the ongoing violations of indigenous citizens\u2019 rights, the persecution of community leaders, and the depredation of natural resources, especially of nuestra madre agua<\/em> (our mother water).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other artists from the region have used materials carried and shaped by water. Master sculptor Feliciano Pop has carved countless pieces over the course of his life, with tremendous wit and great tenderness, out of fragments of pumice stone that have washed up on the shores of the lake. One of my most memorable visits was with the hermanos<\/em> (brothers) Emilio, Juan Ferm\u00edn, and Lorenzo Gonz\u00e1lez Morales, painters who have trained in the local tradition, developing compositionally complex and instantly recognizable styles. Their work is concerned with the life of the community around<\/em> the shores of the lake. One might say that their paintings have a memorial function as well in depicting important rites and festivities alongside aspects of everyday life.4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - See the exhibition and -documentary Miradas bi\u00f3nicas<\/em> (2017) produced by Benvenuto Chavajay and Antonio Pichill\u00e1. On the most important Tz\u2019utujil painters from the region, see Arte Maya Tz\u2019utuhil, artemaya.org\/index.html.<\/span> The celebration of life as seen in these colourful canvases is nevertheless contingent upon immediate circumstances. The Tz\u2019utujil are among the -twenty-one Maya indigenous groups in Guatemala, which represent the majority of the population, despite having been considered a subaltern class since the colonial period. These strong, self-determined communities have survived and resisted colonialism and neo-colonialism for centuries. Yet, the question of indigenous sovereignty and autonomy continues to haunt the country. In recent decades, the incursion of multinational corporations\u200a\u2014\u200athe push to expand mining and construct hydroelectric dams\u200a\u2014\u200ahas led to aggravated disputes over land ownership and water rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lake Atitl\u00e1n has been at the centre of these struggles. Given its importance as a source of freshwater and as one of Guatemala\u2019s most sought-after tourism areas, governmental plans and private-public proposals for development have led to clashes with local communities. By far, the most fiercely contested project has been a megacolector<\/em> wastewater decontamination project, spearheaded by Asociaci\u00f3n Amigos del Lago de Atitl\u00e1n, an NGO with problematic links to the country\u2019s oligarchic elites and the agro-industrial sector. Locals throughout the Solol\u00e1 region have viewed the project with suspicion, and the citizens of San Pedro La Laguna have led protests against it, arguing that it is a covert means to gain access to and privatize the water from the lake. There are further immediate concerns about the lake\u2019s future and the stability of its ecosystem due to environmental changes. Since 2009, it has been invaded by cyanobacteria numerous times. Perhaps even more concerningly, the water level is rising and there are no clear explanations for what might be causing this. The submerged ancient Maya city of Samabaj stands as an ominous reminder of a similar past. Archaeologists believe that it was originally built on an island in the lake, was inhabited between circa 400 BCE and 250 CE, and was then abandoned due to rising water levels as a consequence of seismic events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The struggle for land and water rights in Guatemala has become increasingly urgent. Across Central America, indigenous communities have been waging fierce long-term battles against incursions into their territories by states and corporations, extractivism, and environmental destruction. Activists, community leaders, and their allies are exposed to tremendous risk in seeking to defend these rights. There\u2019s no more tragic example than that of Berta C\u00e1ceres, of Lenca descent in Honduras, who made international headlines only when she was brutally murdered, in spite of her tireless activism over many decades as leader of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) and a prominent campaign against the building of a dam on the Rio Gualcarque river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Guatemala, indigenous community leaders and activists have been aggressively persecuted, unlawfully imprisoned, and killed in recent years. As \u201cdevelopment\u201d projects multiply, the force of repression increases. But so does resistance against it. Activist Bernardo Caal Xol spent four years in prison for defending the rights of the Maya Q\u2019eqchi\u2019 communities negatively impacted by the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Cahab\u00f3n River in the Alta Verapaz region of northern Guatemala.5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Amnesty International, \u201cGuatemala: Bernardo Caal Xol should never have spent a day in prison,\u201d March 25. 2022, accessible online.<\/span> R\u00edos de gente<\/em> (Rivers of People) (2021) was an action organized by artist Regina Jos\u00e9 Galindo and activist Abelino Chub Caal involving over a thousand individuals from indigenous communities throughout Guatemala, as part of the Libertad Para el Agua(Freedom for Water) festival run by the association Ma\u00edz de Vida in April 2021. It was dedicated to Bernardo Caal Xol, who was imprisoned at the time. As part of this action, women, children, and teenagers carried long stretches of blue canvas in a procession. The movement of the people across the landscape animated the canvas, re-creating the flow of water in a collective action meant to denounce the contamination and diversion of rivers due to industry. \u201cFreedom to water!\u201d they chanted in unison. Symbolically, in March 2022, the piece was remade, held and carried throughout the centre of Guatemala City as part of an action that ended in front of the National Palace. One wonders how often this performance will need to be repeated until these voices are heard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Reflecting upon these high stakes, I return to Pichill\u00e1\u2019s piece. Confronted with the majestic presence of the lake, we are summoned to observe the powerful, lasting effect that such quiet motions can set into play, rippling through the air. Unperturbed, a fisherman passes by, seemingly interrupting the scene. Yet his presence is likewise one with the water, in flow, another element. We might remember that our presence too is ephemeral, as we eventually return to the land, and the water, that gave us life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Writer, researcher, and curator Ileana L. Selejan is currently a lecturer in art history, culture, and society at the Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. She is a member of the research collective PhotoDemos and of the experimental art and technology group kinema ikon.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"Antonio-Pichilla_TEJIENDO-EL-PAISAJE\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/109_DO_Selejan_Antonio-Pichilla_TEJIENDOELPAISAJE_DSC09099.jpg\")
Antonio Pichill\u00e1 Quiaca\u00edn<\/strong>
Tejiendo el paisaje<\/em>, photographic documentation, 2020.
Photo: Josu\u00e9 Samol, courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Antonio-Pichilla_TEJIENDO-EL-PAISAJE\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/109_DO_Selejan_Antonio-Pichilla_TEJIENDOELPAISAJE_9500.jpg\")
Antonio Pichill\u00e1 Quiaca\u00edn<\/strong>
Tejiendo el paisaje<\/em>, photographic documentation, 2020.
Photos: Josu\u00e9 Samol, courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Antonio-Pichilla_TEJIENDO-EL-PAISAJE\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/109_DO_Selejan_Antonio-Pichilla_TEJIENDOELPAISAJE_9487.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Benvenuto-Chavajay\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/109_DO_Selejan_Benvenuto-Chavajay_WA0017.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Benvenuto-Chavajay\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/109_DO_Selejan_Benvenuto-Chavajay_DSC3625.jpg\")
Benvenuto Chavajay Ixtetel\u00e1<\/strong>
El retorno de las almas<\/em>, performance views,
Museo Nacional Reina Sof\u00eda, Madrid & Atitl\u00e1n Lake, 2022.
Photos: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Manuel-Chavajay\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/109_DO_Selejan_Manuel-Chavajay_DSC2573.jpg\")
Manuel Chavajay<\/strong>
Jikonriil\u2019|Tensi\u00f3n<\/em>, photographic documentation, 2017.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Regina-Jose-Galindo_Rio-de-Gente\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/109_DO_Selejan_Regina-Jose-Galindo_RiodeGente_DSC06652.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n