The village of Tlatilco ("where things are hidden")

I see a figurine from the village of Tlatilco. This village was settled in the central valley of Mexico around 1700 before Christ.  
The figurine wears a pyrite pendant around her neck and it looks like a mirror.

Ancient Mexican art is recognisable with raw and straightforward descriptions of life. How body and pain is described as something earthly, whilst the soul is divided from this. Many of these expressions are still obtained in modern art.

Another figurine from Tlatilco shows half skeleton and half man.
Archaeologists have been able to reconstruct the life of this culture very well, due to the thousands of objects that have been found. Through the objects we may see life must have been quite peaceful, classless and possibly were men and women equalised. Here there are no figurines depicting rulers and slaves.
Many sculptures have two faces sharing a third eye. Others are half flesh and half bone, others again show loving relationships between nature and human. The figurines are always harmonious and aesthetically and naked. Animals were represented in a likewise manner.
In Tlatilco life was based upon fishermen, hunters, agricultural workers and artists.

The artists at this stage show through this duality how they observe human nature. How human was in tune with the nature of Earth at this time. To be able to create an observing distance and understand nature's way without fear, but rather create a perspective in understanding, also the difficult tasks.

The artist Frida Kahlo's work (1907- 1954) was very much influenced by her own Mexican heritage. Through her Tlatilco shines upon many of her works.
After a serious car accident in 1925, only 18 years old she started painting. She painted personal experiences. Many would say her pictures show agony from tough physical experiences. Also they may reflect upon the hard life that women had and have.

She was not only influenced by the Mexican culture, but also Catholicism, Symbolism and Realism. Many viewed her work as Surrealistic, she did not agree with this title herself. And with the female motifs and the honest form, she became an icon.
The painting "pensuando en la muerte" shows herself with a skeleton mirrored between her eyes. This picture could also have been a painting on her skin, or as the title of the painting says, a thought of death in her mind. Through physical and mental suffering, they portray the raw emotions of agony of being trapped in a malfunctioning body. The paintings are nevertheless extremely strong and expressive. She has made many paintings where she is part of a tree or the living Earth as a whole. Animals are almost always represented with her.

Kiki Smith (1054-) is a female artist based in New York. Through her career she has been dealing with the body, our mortality and vulnerability versus our spiritual mind. She is a feminist and much of her work represents the female body and its functions in contrast to the aesthetically and erotic. She uses media like print, screen print and sculptures

Her sculpture Maria Magdalene is a bronze figure of a woman representing Maria. She is naked and flesh on huge parts of her body is stripped.
The observer can see both bones and flesh underneath. She has a chain around her ankle. All the while she looks up to the sky, longing and with a question on her face. Seemingly asking why she has to be here on Earth in this wounded body of hers that she feels so trapped in.
Smith's work shows how our body is mortal, the duality of nature by making odd creatures who seemingly is a mixture of many, and also she in many works combine the living and the dead.

Maybe unknowingly these artists long for the ancient village of Tlatilco.
Seemingly where women and men were equalised and in tune with nature, no differences, classes or battlements
Where everyone was naked, stripped for layers, open to all aspects of living, the mortality of body and their self conscious ego perhaps was no terror in their mind.

colours are true, to you

a sucker for love
I was a vampire until I bit myself

immerse yourself in colours
see where they take you
start to remember
and take a step further

trust, accept and be
your self

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