NFTianguis
Four year Day of the Dead art exploration
145 / A Day of the Dead art residency built nine Spatial galleries for the nine levels of Mictlán. This is an interview with Vj Deliria, the teacher behind the project and her own experiences with Mictlán. All culminating in the Posadas drop and exhibition in Oculus and Querétaro.
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Timeline
Episode notes
Edit these notes…- NFTianguis, the collective
- Camino al Mictlán project page
- Collective drops, 2021 to 2024
- Vj Deliria
- Teia and objkt, the marketplaces where the drops were minted
- Audio visual showcase at the Oculus, World Trade Center, 25 October 2024
- Camino al Mictlán NFT at the Centro Queretano de la Imagen, Periodismo y Ambiente, 17 October 2024
This conversation follows Vj Deliria through Camino al Mictlán, the Day of the Dead project she leads with the NFTianguis collective: expert talks and hand-drawn art in the first year, a home built in Spatial in the second, Posadas in 3D, and finally a physical showcase in New York and an exhibition in Querétaro.
The nine levels
- Level one belongs to the Xoloitzcuintli. In the Aztec frame, dogs greet the dead: people who were kind to animals are led onward, and people who were not are sent astray. The color of the dog matters too.
- The dead have four years to cross Mictlán, and living family help with prayers and offerings.
- After two hours of talks with archaeologists and anthropologists, each artist had ten minutes to sketch whatever it sparked. In 2021 that work was drawn by hand, before AI.
A home in Spatial
- The second year built nine galleries joined by portals. The ninth level is a circle, the river, with nine exits. An elevator leads to a middle level where poems the artists wrote for each other replace the text in a cemetery, and then to a lounge used as a community center.
- A team of 15 came every week. Recorded talks with experts became lessons with homework, with one-on-one catch-ups for anyone who fell behind. She paid for it herself, and the artists describe it as horizontal.
- The residency also produced its own avatars, as a collective drop, to replace the template avatars.
Beyond Mexico City
- The cosmovision here is Aztec, from Mesoamerica and the area called Anáhuac. The Maya have mirror elements with different deity names, and the shared core is a life after this life.
- She hopes to ask how indigenous communities in places such as Oceania and Brazil hold the same idea, and says the model could be reused for other subjects, such as agriculture.
- The blockchain, for her, is a way to preserve history and culture and to publish how it was done.
Seasons, Posadas and the mint
- Open hours ran from 8 pm to 11 pm. The residency ends on 31 October, the drop is on 1 November, and then the community takes a break.
- The second year was entirely digital, and some relatives thought it was a metaverse cult. That led to wanting a museum or gallery in person.
- Posadas began as church celebrations after the Spanish arrived and moved into the streets as block parties with piñatas. In 3D, each artist brought a piñata, pozole or aguas frescas as their art.
- The nine galleries are never reset. Each year adds work to the level that inspired it, and a few artists made a piece for all nine levels.
- The drops were never listed on OpenSea. They started on Hic et Nunc, moved to Teia when that community took over, and were also on objkt. Artists chose one-of-one or nine editions, and every drop is minted under the NFTianguis account. A tianguis is a Nahuatl word for an open street market.
New York and Querétaro
- The Oculus gallery at the World Trade Center hosted a showcase from 7 pm to midnight. Beat makers and VJs played, each performer was interviewed with audience questions, and everyone left with a screen-printed poster.
- A week later, the exhibition ran at a museum of the image in Querétaro, which her father suggested approaching. Five artists from Mexico City stayed with her and visited San Miguel de Allende for Day of the Dead.
Where it started
- She describes a personal quest shaped by losing her brother when she was 12 and her mother years later. She hopes to recognize her brother’s spirit at the first level alongside her dogs, and would like future versions to make room for grief shared among the artists.