Huichol Folk Art Presentation

LA JOLLA – It has been said that art imitates life.  For Mexico’s Huichol Indians art is the essence of life.

With brightly colored yarn, beeswax and plywood, the Huichol Indians paint the story of their isolated and primitive life in the mountainous states of Jalisco and Nayarit.

“Our art has tremendous symbolic content that shows the perception of our people and our place in the cosmos,” Maximino Gonzalez, a Huichol Indian who has lived in the U.S. for 22 years, told an audience gathered at the Institute of the Americas for a presentation and exhibition of Huichol art on Dec. 3.  

During the presentation, the Institute unveiled a magnificent yarn painting, entitled, “History, Gods, Myths, Rituals and Future of the Huichol Indians,” which is on indefinite loan from the collection of , the world’s foremost collector of Huichol art. The painting is on permanent display in the Weaver Conference Center.

“How did it all begin? It started 35 years ago,” Garfield (Eugenegarfield.org) explained, when he first saw Huichol art in the home of colleague and friend Olga Vasquez and was struck by the vibrant colors and the stories woven through the yarn.

Within a few years, Garfield had acquired more that 50 paintings.  In his apartment, he had 18 of the vibrant paintings hanging side by side on the walls.  “It was a psychedelic apartment,” Garfield said with a laugh.

The yarn painting loaned by Garfield to the Institute of the Americas is one of the largest works of art ever created by a Huichol artist.  Measuring 12 feet by 8 feet, the painting by artist Emeteria Rios Martinez tells a complex story of Huichol life, of gods and goddesses, of creation beliefs and of sacred rituals, such as the fiesta of the squash and the corn and the fiesta of the drum.

With a story told in 12 sections, to mark the months of the year, the painting depicts the birth of the moon, the birth of the sun and the Huichol Indians’ annual 300-mile pilgrimage from their mountain villages to the mountains of San Luis Potosi to find the hallucinogenic peyote cactus and to give offerings to their gods. The brilliant colors and many of the scenes in Huichol art are based on hallucinations experienced under the influence of peyote and on their dreams.  

In the last panel of the painting, Rio predicts the future of her people.  In this scene, Rios sees Huichol elders lamenting that there are no young men left to receive the knowledge of their ancestors or to host the ceremonies to their gods.

“She worried that 20 years hence, her culture would be in danger of losing its traditions and losing its language and its roots,” said Dr. Olga Vasquez, an associate professor on the Department of Communication at UCSD who worked with Rios as she conceptualized the painting.  “We’re seeing some of that occur as people migrate out of the mountains. But through their art they are able to maintain their culture. It is through their art that they are in connection with their traditions. Art draws them all back.”

Art is visible in every aspect of Huichol life, Gonzalez said. Mexico’s Huichol express themselves artistically in their embroidered wool clothing, in their ornate jewelry, in their bead-encrusted statues and in their music played with guitars and violins.

“The search for artist expression is universal. It comes from the creative imagination of people and it is one of the greatest satisfactions that a human being can experience,” he said.  “The Huichol are no different.  For the Huichol, art is a way of beautifying ordinary life.”

Gonzalez plans to retire soon from his job as a forklift operator at Vons and return to the village of his birth in Mexico’s harsh, rugged mountains.  When he returns home, Gonzalez said he will write a book about the Huichol and share with people throughout the Americas the story of his people and his culture.

Event Photos