Huitztlampa, 2023

Huitztlampa, a mechatronic installation of everyday objects, is computer programmed to move in response to live weather signals from Los Angeles. Palma Rodríguez lives in a Nahua agricultural region outside Mexico City and wants his work to provide a heightened sense of urgency about both climate change and labor issues. In the pre-Hispanic Nahuatl creation story, four cardinal points are each associated with a deity: Huitztlampa, the south, is embodied by a hummingbird and the sun in the blue winter sky. This title and the objects (ladder, boots) also reference migrant workers, who must float like hummingbirds and move with the sun.

Fernando Palma Rodríguez (Mexican, b. 1957) combines his training as both an artist and an industrial engineer to create robotic sculptures that utilize custom software to perform complex, narrative choreographies. He lives and works in the agricultural region of Milpa Alta outside Mexico City, where he runs Calpulli Tecalco, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of Nahua language and culture. His practice is focused on indigenous ancestral knowledge as part of contemporary life and as a way of shaping the future as he responds to issues facing his community, such as human and land rights, violence, and urgent environmental crises.