Semilla is a trope of the symbiosis between the lives of Mesoamerican humans and the Earth – as mother; as seed; as plant, fruit, nourishment; and as the science of resilience. It serves as a metaphor for the enduring bonds with the clouds, water, soil, wind, and other life forms that interact in the maize-growing process, as elements in coexistence.

Semilla demystifies the exoticizing fiction of the chronotope in colonial and modern discourse that created the supposed "Mayan gods" by establishing an earth-bound trope : "It is a neologism enclosing a semantic territory that becomes a metaphor for the place to define the exotic, the barbaric, the savage, the primitive, or any combination of motifs involving the notions of alterity and otherness" (G. Weisz, Tinta del Exotismo: Literatura de la Otredad [Color of Exoticism: Literature of Otherness], 2007, p. 99). This work reminds us that there were no gods – not even one – in the ancient ontology. The only elements that existed were those that collectively helped seeds to awaken, grow, be, give, and reproduce as life.

This work is a visual, somatic, ontological, aesthetic, and political realization of centuries-old practice based on the science of ancient Mesoamerican peoples’ nutritional and crop association system. The alignment of threads suggests the furrows, and the knots suggest the seeds, that together will weave life. Like a sort of photograph of the moment when the cycle of life begins anew, the threads and knots represent the potential of the earth and the seeds, the probability or not of becoming maize, beans, and squash. Reproducing life in the soil requires a wise selection of live seeds, for not all merely sleep – some lie without the breath of life. The knots-seeds in the piece refer to the ancient lunar calendar: jun winaq q’anil (20 seeds) or 20 days that multiply correlatively by the numeral 13, 20 seeds that give their k’ux (being) to ancient mathematics, 20 seeds as a metaphor for the warp that will give the k’ux (breath) to the fabric of life.

The education system in Guatemala interrupts the learning of the process of reproducing life by sowing seeds. This civilizing system appropriates the future of the life of the Maya Tz’utujil, for now few learn to cultivate the land, they no longer want to shell maize, nixtamalize it in lime, grind it, and make tortillas from it, opines Pichillá. These "civilized" people underestimate the transformation of seeds into nourishment-life because they prefer to buy packaged food, which leads to obliviousness, dependence, and diseases.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many learned that those who know how to cultivate the land will always be nourished. "Cultivating, harvesting, storing, and exchanging creole and native seeds is safeguarding life. If we don’t plant, what will we eat next year? We live by the life of our lands. Last year’s harvest is this year's food; what is planted now will be next year’s food; planting is intrinsic to time, like weaving" (Antonio Pichillá).

Semilla offers a reflection: humans are seeds and humanity is a sowing. Accordingly, we should understand our existence as a symbiosis with the sun, air, water, dreams, and earth. Each human, with their ideas, intentions, motivations, and actions, is a sowing. Therefore, as Pichillá says, life ought to be a continual observation of each moment. Like maize, we not only sow the seed: we must care for it, clean it, fertilize it, store it, and select chom ija’ (the best seeds) to nourish life next year.

Semilla was first exhibited at the Arco Madrid 2024 fair in Spain.

María Jacinta Xón Riquiac