RiTUAL. A ceremonial act ~ Rites used in the course of worship ~ The performance of ceremonial acts ~ The prescribed form of conducting the ceremony ~ A method of procedure that is followed without variation ~ performance with gestures, words, and objects, often in a sequestered place.
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Susana Vizcarra is an Uruguayan-American writer and professor of literature and languages. Her three books represent three stanzas, having to do with the rituals of writing, painting, singing and dancing that are represented in Mayan art. The three books are referred to as “codices,” (singular “codex”) to reflect the Mayan way of keeping information, which was in books made mostly from the inner bark of the fig tree. Spanish conquerors systematically destroyed works of art like the Mayan codices, and today only three known Mayan codices survive: the Dresden codex, the Paris codex and the Madrid codex. Each handmade book represents a dream of different levels of associations: words and numbers, Flora and Fauna and the Mayan gods.
Contains leaves prints, ink drawings, cutouts, and collage. Represent the written word and numbers of the Mayan world. The cutouts come from images of the Dresden Codex. These images are divided and unconnected; imitating the loss of information resulted from the burning of codices by the Spanish Conquistadors. This book represents the final stanza of the poem “Mayan Dreams”
I dream
of Mayan cosmic numbers of whispered words
of fire, fire, fire.
