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.
Book 2 – Flora and Fauna Codex – contains leaves prints and ink drawings inspired by the Mayan representation of flora and fauna in a diversity of media, from ceramics, sculptures to codices. The cover is a potpourri of plants and animals. The interior pages display a mix of mythological animals and plants. This book represents stanza two of the poem “Mayan Dreams”
