For Where They’re At, artist Theresa Escobedo drew upon the cultural heritage of her indigenous ancestry to create an ofrenda (offering) to Tlazolteotl — a complex and significant Mesoamerican Earth-Mother patroness whose name is understood to mean “Eater of Filth.” 

Believed to have been a Huaxtec fertility goddess from Northern Mexico’s Gulf Coast region, and later assimilated into the Mexica (Aztec) pantheon, Tlazolteotl represents seemingly oppositional forces: death and new life, fertility and decay, lust and sexual impurity, as well as absolution and purification, and all aspects related to the Divine Feminine. She is the deity of the black, fertile and fecund earth, turning all waste — physical and metaphysical — into rich life, and she is responsible for both encouraging and absolving the guilt of sinful deeds.

Central to this installation is a photographic reproduction of a Huaxtec sandstone figure representing Tlazolteol, created between 900-1450 A.D and acquired by the British Museum in 1879.

Combined with contemporary design practices, this ofrenda makes commentary on the ownership and accessibility of indigenous imagery and knowledge, as well as the integration of the photographic medium into multi-disciplinary creative expressions. Foremost, it is the product of an act of prayer, through which the artist’s spiritual inheritances are recognized and reconciled.

As an 11th-generation Tejana, the act of crafting ofrendas is foremost an offering to the artist’s ancestors, some of whose traceable and documented lineage in this land begins with the first civilian immigrants to settle in Texas, and some whose bloodlines belong to the indigenous inhabitants of Coastal and Southern Texas, Northern and Central states of Mexico and elsewhere in Mesoamerica.

“My approach to making merges indigenous spiritual practices with contemporary influences and affirms the universality of spiritual pursuit as a generator of creative expression. Though the mediums employed to make these investigations may vary, each work I create attempts to visualize the hybrid cultural heritage borne from the blending of my indigenous and introduced Texan, Mexican, Canarian, Spanish, and Portuguese lineages.”