Artist Statement:

My art emerges from the land that shaped me, and the stories it continuously tells.

I use the body as a space to narrate stories that are born from living and carrying wound and wonder.

In reconstructing ancient instruments, I discover a language encoded within sound, preserving knowledge hidden in plain sight.

These instruments tell stories across time and space but also across rivers, mountains, wind and kin. When I play, my body becomes a vessel for the most primal creative force, this force is not only for a human audience, but for a natural world so it may continue to inform us of how to be and how to tend the land.

With each performance, with each gesture and collaboration, I reaffirm my connection to the earth, from the first single cell to the children born tomorrow.

I create from the fervent belief that each person carries a legacy of traditions; ritual and stories animate the primordial mind, connecting us to a memory that spoke a common language of oceans, mountains and black earth. Contemplating the earth, I go to the past and future simultaneously and this act of contemplation; ignites the soul.

 We must remember everything, especially that which has remained hidden to us.

ABOUT:

Koyoltzintli, is an interdisciplinary artist, and educator living in NY. Raised in the
pacific coast and the Andean mountains in Ecuador. Her work revolves around sound, ancestral technologies, ritual, and storytelling blending collaborative processes with personal narratives. 
Nominated for Prix Pictet in 2019, and 2023 her work has been exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, the United Nations, Parish Art Museum, Princeton University, Aperture Foundation in NYC, and Paris Photo, She has had two solo shows at Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery and a solo show at Leila Greiche in 2023. She has taught at CalArts, SVA, ICP, and CUNY. Koyoltzintli, has received multiple awards and fellowships including the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, NYFA, We Woman and most recently, the Latinx Artist Fellowship by US Latinx Art Forum (USLAF). Her first monograph Other Stories was published in 2017 by Autograph ABP. Her work was featured in the Native issue of Aperture Magazine (no. 240) and was included in the book Latinx Photography in the United States by Elizabeth Ferrer former chief curator at BRIC.

Koyoltzintli has performed at venues such as The Whitney Museum, Wave Hill, Socrates Park, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum. Most Recently, at Performance Space in NYC Curated by Guadalupe Maravilla, Dia Chelsea for the Closing event of Delcy Morelos' El Abrazo and at Ann Street Gallery in Newburgh, NY.

Credit: Christopher Villafuerte

At dawn, anthropomorphic flutes appear washed up in the shores, ancient objects next to gourds at my relative’s house, memories that constellate. My mother healing me from the evil eye with egg and salt, a room full of saints and santeria, bathing me with my grandmother to gain wisdom, anointing our bodies with herbs, palo santo oil and honey. 

Met Mama Matilde, learned candle magic, walked the red road, blessed with a name revealed in the fire, missed the burial rituals. A teacher in the north, an apprentice in the south, I lived in the crossroads and now the world is upside down. I search for home in my body, the sounds in my ancestors’ voice. A flute speaking the language of stones. Feathers and shells are a gift to the first medicine people in Manabi, technicians of the sacred. They saw the transgression coming, the soft sand and the pink skies disclose a dry land, a decimated forest, a dead tongue, my heart mourns. The mountain I am, Matilde says, carry me like an earring made of soul and mud. Speak in stories. 

I understand the necessity to dream inter-species and co-create with the earth. Clay is a being, is a mother, Queen of the birthing hut. Bones, minerals, plants, breathe looping back into the biome merging slowly for millennia. Nintur created humankind by mixing clay with the blood of a slain god, we need more rites of passages and more ceremonies. In art, I seek the yanantin, the return to essence, a wholeness that imbues the psyche. Sound making, object making, star gazing, the body is a vessel for the most primal creative force, the same force that gave shape to the universe. Taripaypacha, time to meet ourselves again.  

In memory of K.M. Continuing the prayer.

Send me an email if you want to be on my mailing list and for any other inquiries.

Drop a line, share your thoughts.

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When [in the world] one sees nothing else, 

hears nothing else, recognizes nothing else:

that is [participation] in the infinite. 

But when one sees, hears and recognizes only otherness:

that is smallness. the infinite is immortal, that which is small is mortal.

But Sir, that infinite, upon what is it established?

Upon its own greatness -- or rather, not upon greatness.

for by greatness people understand cows and horses, elephants, gold, slaves, wives, estates.

that is not what I mean; not that. For in that context everything is established on something else.

This infinite of which I speak is below. It is above. It is to the east, to the west, to the south and to the north.

It is in fact, this whole world.

And accordingly, with respect to the notion of ego:

I also am below, above, to the east, to the west, to the south and to the north. I, also am this whole world.

-Chhandogya Upanishad