Digital c-print on Hahnemuhle hemp paper

Signed and numbered

Artist Claudia Peña Salinas has produced a new limited edition photographic print on the occasion of Printed Matter’s Virtual Art Book Fair. The print depicts the sacred geometries of the pre-Columbian temple of Chichen Itza, a complex of Mayan ruins in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. This artwork is a composite of serial paintings in which Peña Salinas transferred black toner from photocopied images of the pyramid onto wax panel surfaces, and then carved the wax to create the lines.

The print edition, “El Castillo Variations” depicts the archeological pyramid in Chichen Itza also known as the Temple of Kukulcán. During the equinoxes, the structure draws many visitors to the archeological site to view an astrological alignment phenomenon; seven isosceles triangle shadows cast on the steps give the serpent stone heads at the bottom of the pyramid the appearance of a body. Each variation presents a fragmented view of the structure and alludes to the transitory nature of visibility and invisibility in a reconstruction project framework. The pyramid is caught in a moment of constant transformation or becoming. - Claudia Peña Salinas

Claudia Peña Salinas’ (b. Mexico, 1975) practice combines sculpture, images, installation, and video to tell poetic and political narratives that unite modern and minimalist architecture with ancestral mythology. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and received her MFA from Hunter College, New York. Peña Salinas’s first institutional solo exhibition was held in 2018 at MSU’s Broad Art Museum, and her second solo museum exhibition was held at the ASU Art Museum in 2019. Her work was included in the formative Latinx group exhibition Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art, at The Whitney Museum. She has participated in several other museum group shows including at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, Queens Museum of Art, New York, El Museo del Barrio, New York, and El Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, among others. Peña Salinas’ work is currently in ICI’s traveling exhibition Never Spoken Again curated by David Ayala-Alfonso, Memory Palace at the Highline Art, as well as a window commission at the Depaul Art Museum. Peña Salinas lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and is represented by EMBAJADA, San Juan.

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