Code-X: Contemporary Chicanx Codices
Code-X: Contemporary Chicanx Codices
Vicki Myhren Gallery, University of Denver
2121 E. Asbury Avenue, Denver, CO 80210
January 9–February 23, 2025
Curated by Rafael Fajardo
Admission: free
Review by Maggie Sava
Code-X: Contemporary Chicanx Codices, currently on view at the Vicki Myhren Gallery, underscores the lasting influence and relevance of one of the oldest visual and cultural storytelling mediums. Featuring the work of fifteen codex makers, Code-X shows how artists push the form into a variety of new iterations while engaging in the age-old practices of recording histories, commentating on socio-political issues, exploring identity, and participating in collective world-building. [1]
An installation view of Code-X: Contemporary Chicanx Codices at the Vicki Myhren Gallery at the University of Denver. Image by Maggie Sava.
Codices—pictorial and sometimes textural manuscripts or books—date back to the ancient Mesoamerican period, when Indigenous communities used image-making practices to describe their world. Early codices show the happenings of daily life, migration, politics, spirituality, and more. [2] Later, they would document the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, and the subsequent upheaval brought on by colonization, including social, political, and religious violence and the seizing of territory and resources by the European colonizers. [3]
Sandy Rodriguez, Study No. 25 (Mapa for Malinche and our Stolen Sisters) - Para el Susto, n.d., hand-processed watercolor on amate paper. Sandy Rodriguez, Study No. 1 (Mapa for Malinche and our Stolen Sisters) - Birth of Malinali Tenepal, n.d., hand-processed watercolor on amate paper with 23k gold. Sandy Rodriguez, Study No. 12 (Mapa for Malinche and our Stolen Sisters) - Templo, n.d., hand-processed watercolor on amate paper. Sandy Rodriguez, Study No. 1b (Mapa for Malinche and our Stolen Sisters) - Relaciones Geographicas Tabasco - locating Coatzacoalcos, n.d., hand-processed watercolor on amate paper with 23k gold. Image by Maggie Sava.
Artist Sandy Rodriguez explores the history of the Spanish invasion in her various studies for Mapa for Malinche and our Stolen Sisters (n.d.), using materials and aesthetics that resemble historical codices. [4] In these watercolor works, Rodriguez depicts nature, features of the landscape, and historical events, like the birth of Malinalli Tenepal, who would later become known as La Malinche.
Sandy Rodriguez, Study No. 1 (Mapa for Malinche and our Stolen Sisters) - Birth of Malinali Tenepal, n.d., hand-processed watercolor on amate paper with 23k gold. Image by Maggie Sava.
La Malinche is a complicated figure in Chicanx culture. As an Aztec woman who served as conquistador Hernán Cortés’s interpreter, she has often been characterized as a traitor. However, many historians and artists offer a more nuanced and sympathetic view, one of a woman who was sold into slavery by her mother and forced to serve colonizers, relying on her knowledge as a means of agency and survival. [5] By referencing La Malinche as a stolen sister and depicting her with the supernatural adornment of a gold swirl resembling those given to deities or saints, Rodriguez appears to be offering the latter view. Here, it seems that La Malinche’s story is positioned as an important part of the complicated development of modern Mexican and Chicanx identity, one that is an intricate interaction of Indigenous roots and European colonization.
Yreina D. Cervántez, NEPANTLA Triptych (Nepantla/Mi Nepantla/Beyond Nepantla), 1995-1996, lithograph on paper. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Made nearly 500 years after the conquest of the Aztec empire led by Cortés, Yreina D. Cervántez’s NEPANTLA Triptych (Nepantla/Mi Nepantla/Beyond Nepantla) (1995-1996) addresses the arduous negotiation of this collision of worlds and how “nepantla,” a term coined by Gloria Anzaldúa based on the Nahuatl word which means “in-betweenness,” continues to affect Chicanx identity. [6]
Yreina D. Cervántez, the first print in NEPANTLA Triptych (Nepantla/Mi Nepantla/Beyond Nepantla), 1995-1996, lithograph on paper. Image courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum.
From left to right, the lithographs start with the history of forced assimilation, which Cervántez outlines through textual references, diagrams, and newspaper clippings. The middle print dives into Anzaldúa’s formative writings on nepantla, which Cervántez pairs with photographs, like one of a child from the 1950s labeled “Kid Azteca” with a drawn-on, ornate headdress, illustrations that include an image of Frida Kahlo, and a poem by Gloria Enedian Alvarez.
Yreina D. Cervántez, the middle print in NEPANTLA Triptych (Nepantla/Mi Nepantla/Beyond Nepantla), 1995-1996, lithograph on paper. Image courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum.
The last print seems to move past the liminal existence between two worlds. In this lithograph, Cervántez portrays a spiraling snake which creates a portal-like composition. Could this be a pathway into a new space or new identity that does not exist in response to the demands of a dominant culture, but rather a generative, creative, and liberating one? This lithograph includes a quote from Jamake Highwater, a now controversial figure who was accused of fabricating his Indigenous identity to achieve greater success as a writer. [7]
Yreina D. Cervántez, the third print in NEPANTLA Triptych (Nepantla/Mi Nepantla/Beyond Nepantla), 1995-1996, lithograph on paper. Image courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum.
It is unclear whether this would have been known to Cervántez at the time she created this triptych, as Hank Adams published his first expose of Highwater in 1984, which he followed with a further investigation into Highwater’s biographical contradictions after his death in 2001. There is an unfortunate irony to the inclusion of his voice, when it comes to bridging cultures and feeling torn between the world of ancestors and the imposition of western identity, making the interpretation of this work challenging.
Enrique Chagoya, Codex YTREBIL, 2022, color lithograph. Image by Maggie Sava.
Enrique Chagoya also explores the ongoing impacts of colonization and how it manifests in contemporary social dynamics and power stratification. Chagoya’s Codex YTREBIL (2022) features rows of drawings above words that, when read backwards, spell common and evocative phrases like “hope,” “liberty,” “freedom,” and “yo te amo.” The images above them suggest a corresponding symbolic language. They directly call out the evils of colonial systems, like a mouthless monk with a glowing halo and a long, pointed finger above the word “aígoloedi” (ideología), or a plane dropping bombs over the exploding ground above “ymonoce labolg” (global economy). It also complicates the role of popular visual culture, for instance through the depiction of Batman in front of the bat symbol, this time rendered in the style of a Mesoamerican bat image.
Eric J. García, Space Invaders Tour Guide, front and back, 2020, offset print with black light ink. Image by Maggie Sava.
With the inclusion of modern pop culture iconography and forays into digital mediums, many of the artists in Code-X appear to evoke the idea of Chicanafuturism, a term coined by Dr. Catherine Sue Ramírez as an adaptation of the concept of Afrofuturism. Ramírez asserts that “Chicanafuturist works excavate and retell histories of contact, colonialism, displacement, labor, migration, resistance, and social and cultural transformation in the Americas…And Chicanafuturism reckons with the past as it rethinks the present and envisions the future of the ‘New World.’” [8]
This focus on recontextualizing history and, in some cases, imagining new futures appears in several of the video games included in the exhibition. The interactive nature of these works challenges how we engage with the stories shared in Code-X, demonstrating that we do have (or can have) a more active role in them than we recognize.
Cherish Marquez, a still from Rio Verde, 2020, videogame. Image by Maggie Sava.
Cherish Marquez, a still from Rio Verde, 2020, videogame. Image by Maggie Sava.
Several of the artists use their video games as a way to, as Ramirez notes, create new worlds, like the one Cherish Marquez envisions in Rio Verde (2020). This work depicts a beautiful and expansive landscape with green shrubbery and orange rock formations, which you navigate through a POV camera angle as you search for different objects. Looming in the sky are three giant golden figures. This place seems to exist in an undefined time (or perhaps outside of time), and the concreteness of the landscape contrasts with the simultaneously sci-fi and supernatural energy of the figures.
Eric J. García, Historical Space Invaders, not dated, videogame. Image by Maggie Sava.
Eric J. García, detail of Historical Space Invaders, not dated, videogame. Image by Maggie Sava.
Using a different approach in game design, Eric J. García plays with the widespread nostalgia for the old Oregon Trail and Space Invaders video games, combining them into a satirical critique of westward expansion in his works. In his video game Historical Space Invaders (n.d.), the player controls a bow and arrow, which is shooting at rows of guns, missionary boats, and mission churches before they can destroy the Mesoamerican pyramids at the bottom of the screen. The player is encouraged to fight back against the incoming colonizers and their different waves of violence, both physical and spiritual.
Eric J. García, Space Invaders Tour Guide, back, 2020, offset print with black light ink. Image by Maggie Sava.
García’s Space Invaders Tour Guide (2020) catalogs the tools, uniforms, and weapons of the Spanish and, later, U.S. forces that sought to dominate, oppress, and murder Indigenous peoples. These invaders are identified as aliens, and their corresponding possessions are described as if they are artifacts in an anthropological exhibition—not unlike how colonizing societies treated Indigenous peoples and their material culture. García’s effective use of humor and irony creates a biting criticism of the discipline of anthropology and of museums, which have at various points in history propagated the narratives of oppressors and othered cultures to reify dominance.
Installation shot of the alebrijes in Code-X: Contemporary Chicanx Codices at the Vicki Myhren Gallery. Image by Maggie Sava.
Between some of the heavier themes and works, I found a pleasant shift and repose in the section of the exhibition featuring alebrijes. The colorful and whimsical energy of the animals and animal-like creatures are on display with a game created by Michael Anthony DeAnda called Alebrije.
Michael Anthony DeAnda, Tiny Generator, Alebrijes, a drawing and storytelling game. Image by Maggie Sava.
Alebrijes made by exhibition attendees in Code-X: Contemporary Chicanx Codices at the Vicki Myhren Gallery. Image by Maggie Sava.
In this work, gallery visitors are invited to sit down, design their own alebrijes, and tell stories about how they accompany or support them through different parts of life. Drawings created by other attendees are hung on the wall, allowing you to add yours to the ongoing, shared, and growing story.
An installation view of Code-X: Contemporary Chicanx Codices at the Vicki Myhren Gallery. Image by Maggie Sava.
Code-X feels like a very active exhibition, not only in its interactive elements but also in the way so many of the pieces tap into significant and timely themes. It demonstrates the harm that erasure or co-opting of representation creates alongside the empowerment of reclaiming cultural identity and history. The timing and location of this show are significant as well.
Denver is a city with an important role in Chicanx history, especially with El Movimiento of the 1960s and 1970s, and is now a metro-area in the focus of the anti-immigrant rhetoric and political operations of the new U.S. government administration. [9] The histories of oppression that so many works in this exhibition expose do not seem that removed from the current moment. However, Code-X balances the almost overwhelming sense of immediacy with wit, emphasizing adaptability, creativity, resonance, and resistance in storytelling.
Maggie Sava (she/her) is an art historian and writer based in Denver. She holds a BA in art history and English, creative writing from the University of Denver and an MA in contemporary art theory from Goldsmiths, University of London.
[1] The fifteen artists in the show are Anthony Aleman, Yreina D. Cervántez, Enrique Chagoya, Michael DeAnda, PhD, Adán De La Garza, Carlos Fresquez, Eric J. García, Dulce Soledad Ibarra, Alma López, Cherish Marquez, Michael Menchaca, Francisco Ortega, Sandy Rodriguez, Leo Sailas, and Miguel A. Tarango
[2] “An Introduction to Mapas,” The Mapas Project, University of Oregon, accessed February 5, 2025, https://mapas.wired-humanities.org/content/introduction.
[3] Ibid.
[4] For more information on this history and usage of amate paper, see “Amates. Corteza de Identidad,” The Mexican Museum, accessed February 5, 2025, https://www.mexicanmuseum.org/amates-corteza-de-identidad.
[5] Farah Mohammed, “Who Was La Malinche?,” JSTOR Daily, published March 1, 2019, https://daily.jstor.org/who-was-la-malinche/.
[6] David Bowles, “Nepantla #1: Definitions,” Medium, published Jan 6, 2017, https://davidbowles.medium.com/nepantla-1-definitions-296c18198528.
[7] Alex Jacobs, “Fool's Gold: The Story of Jamake Highwater, the Fake Indian Who Won't Die,” ICT News, published June 19, 2015, https://ictnews.org/archive/fools-gold-the-story-of-jamake-highwater-the-fake-indian-who-wont-die.
[8] Catherine Sue Ramírez, PhD, “Chicanafuturism,”Catherine Sue Ramírez, PhD, accessed February 5, 2025, https://catherinesramirez.com/research/chicanafuturism/
[9] https://www.cpr.org/2025/01/29/aurora-immigration-raid-postponed/.
