Visual artist Sandy Rodriguez and writer Adolfo Guzman-Lopez discuss the reclamation of 16th century Aztec pictographic techniques in their collaboration around a series of works titled Codex Rodriguez-Mondragon.
The Codex Rodriguez-Mondragon is a set of bioregional maps and paintings produced with similar materials to the Aztec visual texts that inspired them. The original indigenous codices reflected their producers’ cultural and critical perspective in the wake of Spanish colonization after 1521. Rodriguez’s contemporary codex and Guzman-Lopez’s poetry responding to it reflect their contemporary cultural and political perspective within the contested borderlands of Southern California and Greater Mexico, engaging issues of cultural memory, genocide, and resistance.
Sandy Rodriguez earned her BFA from the California Institute of Arts. Her work investigates methods and materials of painting across cultures and history. Her paintings envision moments of transformation in the social, political, and cultural landscape of Southern California, foregrounding themes of resistance, persistence, and cultural regeneration. She has exhibited at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art; Art+Practice space in Los Angeles; and Self Help Graphics in East Los Angeles. She currently has a solo exhibition at the Riverside Art Museum, and is represented in group shows at The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, the Music Center, and the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County.
Adolfo Guzman-Lopez is a poet and journalist who co-founded the performance-poetry group The Taco Shop Poets. The San Diego-based group toured nationally, recorded two CDs, and published two anthologies. His poems have been published in Geography of Rage: Remembering the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature, and other publications. His work as a reporter for KPCC 89.3FM in Los Angeles since 2000 has earned him the Los Angeles Press Club’s “Radio Journalist of the Year” award and other journalism honors.
Sponsored by Latino/a and Latin American Studies. The LLAS Speaker Series is generously supported by the Marie Young Speaker Fund and the Office of the Dean of the College.
