Reclaiming our Grandmothers

Most accounts of Maya history and cosmology produced over the past 500+ years come from non-Indigenous sources. In contemporary society, Indigenous women – brown and female, are often objectified, romanticized, hyper-sexualized, and de-humanized. These seemingly harmless stereotypes produce devastating consequences including alarming rates of abuse, rape, disappearance, murder, self-harm, and suicide plaguing Indigenous women and girls.

Local artist, Zamara Cuyún combats these injustices with painted visual stories that re-imagine new systems of understanding and healing for Indigenous womanhood and identity. Using elements of Guatemalan Maya history, ideology, myth, and iconography, Cuyún presents a world that is at times vibrant, colorful, and dreamlike while at other times restless, violent, and unsettling.