Tiemperos del Antropoceno
Federico Cuatlacuatl
Medium: 3D Animation, Digital Photography, Installation, Multimedia, Sound Design, and Video (2020-2022)
Issues: Migrant Indigenous Futurity, Nahua Futurism, Timekeepers of the Anthropocene, and Transborder Indigeneity
Project Links
Description
By highlighting Nahua migrant diasporas in the U.S. Tiemperos del Antropoceno is a short experimental film that seeks to amplify the aggressive colonial history in Mexico towards Indigenous communities in Cholula. Ultimately, to hold Mexico accountable for forcing these communities to a forced self-displacement. The film intentionally uses spoken Nahuatl to amplify and revitalize this native language from Nahua communities. Some words are not translated because of their conceptual complexity and also as a gesture of resistance, self-preservation, and decoloniality. The dialogue in Tiemperos del Antropoceno also critiques western academia for playing a role in fabricating a history and narrative only from the colonizer’s perspective.
As an ongoing project, Tiemperos del Antropoceno addresses how these Indigenous migrant communities can heal from intergenerational trauma, from hardships crossing the border, and subsisting as undocumented migrants in the U.S. The land bears witness to our memory, the land holds the pain that these communities have endured for hundreds of years and continue to endure through forced self-displacements. The images and videos in this ongoing project talk about healing, resiliency, self-rematriation, self-preservation, re-indigenization, reclaiming land, and the right to be a migrant as a basic human right.
Tolchikaualistli: to exist simultaneously in two places and dimensions of time is an immigrant’s ability to embody a transborder life, navigating the past, present, and future at once. To (be)long is to reclaim territory, in this case it is a transcendence of time and space as a means to reclaim a new dimension of territory or place that must exist in between two worlds, between the past and the future, between two identities, between ones many selves. Smuggling traditions are acts of resiliency, self-preservation, resistance, and self-rematriation in a dimension of transborder indigeneity and within one’s many selves: to be an alien; to be the other; to be the threat; to be the dream; to be the backbone; to be the invasion; to be a cultural nomad; to be (in)visible; to be 500 years of historical weight; to be a ‘pinche indio’; to be hope…
Previous showings
Light Matter Film Festival, Alfred, NY
Fractures of Memory, Virginia Commonwealth University
Miradas Sin Tiempo Film Festival, Museo Nacional de Antropología
12th Encuentro para Cinefagos, Venezuela
Future Bodies New Media Caucus Symposium, Virginia Tech University
Made in VA, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art
International Independent Film Fair of Bogota, Colombia
Global Migrations, Casa de Iberoamerica, Spain
Bio
Federico Cuatlacuatl is an artist born in San Francisco Coapan, Cholula, Puebla, Mexico. He is currently based in Charlottesville, VA and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Virginia. Federico’s work is invested in disseminating topics of Nahua indigenous immigration, social art practice, and cultural sustainability. Building from his own experience growing up as an undocumented immigrant and previously holding DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), Federico’s creative practice centers on the intersectionality of Indigeneity and immigration under a pressing Anthropocene. At the core of his most recent research and artistic production is the intersection of Transborder Indigeneity, migrant Indigenous diasporas, and Nahua futurisms. Federico’s independent film productions have been screened in national and international film festivals and exhibitions. As founder and director of the Rasquache Artist Residency in Puebla, Mexico, he actively stays involved in socially engaged works and binational endeavors.