Andrew Finegold publishes article titled “‘Coatlicue,’ Redoubled and Juxtaposed”
Introduction
Associate professor of art history Andrew Finegold has published an article titled " 'Coatlicue,' Redoubled and Juxtaposed" in the journal Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture. [Link]
Abstract:
Over the past century, numerous artworks have referenced the Aztec statue commonly referred to as “Coatlicue,” overlaying, combining, or juxtaposing it with imagery relating to Christianity, Western civilization, or modernity. Through such doubling, these artworks make claims about the commensurability of the pre-Columbian past with European culture and the equal contributions of both to Mexican or Chicanx identity. Iconographically, the ways they invoke the original statue can be characterized as both too broad and too specific, making it stand for the entirety of pre-Hispanic heritage while understanding it to represent a particular named mother goddess associated with the earth. Half a century of scholarship has called into question this latter reading, which derives from both the rhetoric of late nineteenth to early twentieth-century Mexican nationalism and an outdated understanding of Mesoamerican deities and their representation, but which nevertheless continues to persist in the popular imagination. Yet despite this common (mis)understanding of the monument’s iconography, these artworks’ engagement with its form might help to illuminate other aspects of the original sculpture’s meaning. I find that the format of these works—the use of doubling to combine the Coatlicue monolith with other imagery—arises directly from the formal and structural logic of the Aztec monument and reflects pre-Hispanic ways of conveying the constantly fluctuating forces of the natural and social realms. Thus, regardless of the intentionality of the artists who made them, I believe these modern artworks can be understood to manifest a survivance of Indigenous epistemologies embedded within visual culture.