Who speaks in Einstein's ear? Contemporary Indigenous Art in the State of Chiapas (Mexico)

Abstract

Abstract. This article analyzes the current artistic production of the indigenous peoples of Chiapas, combining a sociological focus and an aesthetic perspective. The Zapatista uprising of 1994, transformed the urbanistic structure and social fabric of San Cristóbal de Las Casas in such a way that, today, the idealized indigenous world for tourism does not compare to the real indigenous world of the urban neighborhoods. This social context conditions the production of the “creative intellectuals” (plastic artists, writers,

nontraditional musicians) who represent the different indigenous groups of Chiapas. The plastic artists

fi nd themselves in a position of inferiority due to the lack of an audience, and their dependence on the random help from the State; even so, some express and “neo-Indian” identity based on the reinvention of ethnic paradigms that confronts modernity and renews elements of contemporary art and appropriating in a nonconventional manner public spaces. These artists exemplify a conscious syncretism that obliges us

to reexamine ethnic criteria and to distance ourselves from anthropological purism in order to recognize the experienced vitality and open nature of contemporary indigenous cultures.