Codex: Map of my childhood was inspired by the 2019 exhibit Mapping Memory: Space and History in 16th Century Mexico at the Blanton Museum in Austin. These Mapas de las Relaciones Geográficas were created by indigenous artists in the late 16th century for Spain and incorporate an amalgamation of imagery and symbols from their culture and from that of the colonizers. As in many of the mapas, footprints mark my own transit in the 1950s around the community landmarks of memory. Others would have represented this time and space differently.
Codex: Map of my childhood documents my childhood summers that revolved around two proximate former plantation houses, a small vernacular rural frame home on one of these places, the swimming hole, and the church. The antebellum structures were in disrepair, and one would later be torn down and the other preserved. The resulting 4 x 6’ canvas reflects the mapmaking tradition of Mapas, representing a history and interpretation of the space I traversed six decades ago. The brown pigment is dirt from my childhood friend’s cotton field. Cotton forms a sea around the buildings, crossing the highways, just as I saw it in 2018 when I returned.
At the entry point to my Choked on Cotton exhibition at the Community Artists’ Collective in Houston this year, Codex carries childhood innocence and nostalgia. At the same time, as a mapas, it presents a colonial representation of my family place and, with that, my identity in that space. Confronting that identity fuels my art and my commitment to Klein Arts & Culture.