In her new work, Penachos (2019), Tania Candiani works around the Danza de los Quetzales in an installation composed of video, objects, and live activation. The dance of the Quetzales is one of the few ceremonial dances that has survived the evangelization crusade in Mesoamerica, and it is still performed in the Nahua-Totonaca region located between the Mexican states of Puebla and Veracruz. Although nowadays it is often performed for public appreciation, the ecclesiastical prohibition did not manage to deprive it of its ritual character. The dancers honor the sun and ask for divine favors such as good weather, abundant harvest, and health, as the purpose of the dance is to benefit agricultural labor.

The core of the dance is composed of greetings to the four winds, protecting the farmers from the elements in all directions. It is a solemn, organized dance evolving around parallel and crossing lines of movements of zapateados (a sort of tap dance), twists, and reverences. The main movement of the dance is when the dancers bow to each other, curving their bodies and their heads, which carry the “penachos,” reverencing each other and the elements. These spectacular headdresses are thought to predate the Conquest, perhaps by hundreds of years. Their large and rounded shapes represent different symbologies through their colors and patterns.

In Candiani’s piece, these symbols were suppressed through an editing process by the artist to reach the very essential gesture of respect and reverence in the bow. Just like the gesture of bowing itself, Penachos strives to reach a universal language of geometry. Through the dance, not only is the rounded shape of the headdress present, but also the triangular negative space formed by the gap occupied by the dancers’ bodies and squared shapes that come from the alignment of one or more headdresses. The piece proposes a reinterpretation of the symbolic meaning of the movements of the dance based on reverences of gratitude and hopefulness – a movement that ties in with the concept for the 2019 edition of The Armory Show's Platform.

According to Sally Tallant, curator of this edition of Platform, which takes place parallel to the 80th anniversary of the 1939 New York World’s Fair: “The New York World’s Fairs looked to a hopeful future in the face of rising global political uncertainty. Today, we are living in dark times: borders are closing; there is a growing refugee crisis; identity, internationalism, and citizenship are in turmoil.” With this in mind, Tallant took the title “Worlds of Tomorrow” from the 1939 edition for the 2019 Platform.

Candiani’s celebration of the Danza de los Quetzales tries to recuperate the hopeful representation of a possible future where life is exalted. As the artisan that worked on the black-and-white version of Candiani’s penachos told her: “I can make them in black and white, but I have to keep at least a red line. In the penachos, red is the blood, and nothing is alive without a little blood.”