Miquiztli-Tecolote, 2023

Video Documentation by Anna Tse at the Ghostlight Residency

In this embodiment and performance, Yoli travels along the moonlit path to Mictlan (the underworld) and the shadowlands, and re-members the “grandmothers who make love to the moon”, as a softening revolt to heterosexuality with “Miquiztli-Tecolote” as their guide. “Miquiztli-Tecolote” (which translates to the Owl of Death in Nahuatl-Spanish) is moved by the impulse of desire, intimacy, and the visceral; as a yearning to reconcile the physical and emotional distance between them and their ever changing, mysterious, and elusive lover; the moon. The moon and this journey of seduction is symbolic of queer and “lesbian” desire as an initiation and wisdom path.

Miquiztli-Tecolote carries a winged-staff made by Yoli made of palm leaves and cedar branches which holds their ailing body, the power of their flight, and their ability to dialogue with the dead/ancestors. The winged-staff is part of an ongoing exploration that seeks to create sculptures made from materials of the Earth, that can performatively be activated, and then given back to the Earth as an offering.

As Miquiztli-Tecolote looks into the past (reshaped as the living, breathing, feeling present) wrapped in queer abuela and abuele “conocimientos” (knowings), we peer into the psycho-emotional history that has dismembered indigiqueer medicine traditions to give birth to the colonial-nation-state of Mexico and the identity of the “mexican mestizo”.

In the architecture of this ritual performance, Yoli explores altars and trance as a transtemporal communication device to unearth the visions of the queer and lesbian indigenous “abueles” that

have been silenced and repressed in the blood clambering grasp for “modernity”. In curanderismo, altars also called “la mesa de negociones” (the table of negotiation), is a medicine practice to dialogue with spirit(s) and the aires (the winds) and it is from this technology that Miquiztli-Tecolote has emerged.

The Abueles and Miquiztli-Tecolote remind us that the power we have been taught to fear is the same power that has subjugated femme and trans indigenous ancestors to the categories of “evil, devil, and hell”. This piece is a testament to transforming the internalized colonial fear of Yoli’s own ancestral lineages and to replace fear with an embrace of power.

“Our power is like time, it is like the moon, it is like a cloth on the loom.”

Yoli

Yoli is a xicanx shapeshifter and re-indigenzing cornstalk with roots along the border and so-called central mexico. Their creation, ritual, and body practices are devoted to liberating from colonial disembodiment and rooting in belonging as a "hije perdido" (lost child) finding their way home to the Earth and queer'ed ancestral ways of "being". They use play, performance, improvisation, personas, ritual-ceremony, and deep listening to explore the intersections between queer intimacy, earth-based sentience, curanderx medicine ways, and indigenous cosmologies. Along with performance, they share what they learn through film/photography, sculpture, installation, writing, teaching, facilitating, friendship, medicine making, "being", and other emergent forms. They are currently working on their DIY PhD centered on (Eco)Somatics through School For the Ecocene.