Cesar Martinez Silva, XIPE TOTEC PUNK, 2014
| Date: | Friday, 13 March 2015 |
| Time: | 18:30 – 20:00 |
| Venue: | Delfina Foundation |
| Suggested donation: | £5 |
César Martinez (Mexico, 1962) makes sculptures out of edible materials to be consumed by the public during his performances. The events evoke collective anthropophagic rituals, updating the millennial traditions of pre-Colombian sacrifices into a reflection on consumption and contemporary economic crisis. By means of a highly inventive and hilarious language the artist elaborates allegorical speeches during the eating rituals. Conceptual and metaphorical layers contained in the act of eating translate the politics of food into palatable humour.
His residency at Delfina Foundation will culminate with the creation and presentation of his work XIPE TOTEC PUNK, a site-specific edible sculpture to be consumed by attendants of the performance.
In Aztec mythology, Xipe Totec or ‘Our Lord the Flayed One” was a life-death-rebirth deity, god of youth, agriculture, vegetation and abundance, patron of goldsmiths and silversmiths, symbol of fertility and love. Myth tells that Xipe Totec flayed himself to give food to humanity, symbolic of the way maize seeds lose their outer layer to germinate, and of snakes shedding their skin. Widely worshipped in central Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest, Xipe Totec was known throughout most of Mesoamerica. The bodies of the sacrificial subjects were flayed and the priests, performing a ritual dance of rebirth, wore their skin over their bodies.
The performance will re enact the sacrifice by means of two performers dressed with suits covered in Serrano ham that will be offered to the audience to consume.
This event is part of Performance as Process.