Algún día llegará la noche (Someday the night will come)

The exhibition brings together works from 2015 up to now and includes sculptures, masks, full-body suits, and calligraphy ink drawings, which in various iterations involve the use of or reference to woven palm leaf, an Indigenous craft tradition laden with historical weight. Tlaseca’s engagement with the medium was inspired by the historical reference of the “petateados” or palm-wrapped bodies, a connection that deepened when meeting the artisans from the community of San Pedro Jocotipac, Oaxaca, who he has collaborated with since 2015.

The first series to emerge, encapsulating his concept of the body as “meat” or conduit, is Aquella ruina negra, on view here. It fea- tures a group of sculptures crafted from cow bones dressed with threaded palm fiber, resembling talismans. Alongside these are braided masks produced during this period: some are “blind,” with sealed eyes and stylized ears and noses, while others have palm fronds that evoke fuzzy, eccentric facial hair. These works exude a playful yet seductive charm, reflecting Tlaseca’s enduring fasci- nation with play, costuming, masking, drag, and the role of fantasy—overarching themes that resonate throughout the exhibition. For him, the “second skin,” manifested in the present materials, acts as a provocation, challenging and potentially destabilizing the very notion of origin.

His initial exploration with palm leaf also marked the start of the relationship with the artisans Juana Mendoza and Juan Garcia, one that has grown to include Juana López Vásquez, Maximina Diego Rodríguez, and Cecilio Vásquez Vásquez. A link that has evolved into a collaboration that interweaves their knowledges and sees them co-experimenting with new forms and materials. Over a decade of mutual trust and reciprocal learning, this dynamic has given rise to four new works from the Xipe mask series featured here—crafted from dyed leather, zigzagging between black and brown, dark and light blue, and bone white, and one featuring fallow deer fur. Each elongated, slender piece was meticulously cut and hand-stitched by Tlaseca, then assembled with the skilled hands of the artisans. The long, messy fronds obscure the wearer’s identity, evoking a sensual uncanniness that hovers between shamanic and BDSM ritual.

From this point, a profound engagement with the figure of Xipe Totec unfolds, marked by a series of full-body suits woven from palm leaf that were featured in the video that lends both the project and this exhibition its title—a phrase borrowed from Juan Rulfo’s Talpa (1950). Tlaseca’s connection to Xipe Totec stems from the figure’s symbolic power of transformation—they are a pre-Hispanic deity whose name translates to “owner of skin” and who was said to wear the flayed skin of sacrificial victims. Xipe Totec embodies regeneration, the renewal of cycles, and serves as a guide between life and death, resonating deeply with Tlaseca’s exploration of identity as fractured and fluid, existing within shifting temporalities.

This group of three suits (all 2019) transitions from the tightly interlaced to the loosely frayed, semi-formal to raw and unbound. They connect in their dynamism and performativity to the new set of ink drawings, which depict bodies in motion—unraveling, twisting, and morphing with exuberant vitality.

This exhibition marks a pivotal moment in Tlaseca’s practice, following his nearly completed two-year residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam—an institution known for fostering an international community of artists. This period of distancing from his place of origin has once again migrated his positionality, enabling him to develop new visual languages. From afar, markers of identity are often imposed, forcing a renegotiation of their meaning. Tlaseca’s persistent refusal of fixity, evident throughout his decade-long exploration and carried into his new body of work, pushes this resistance into new realms.

Text by Jovanna Venegas