Heaven is Whenever / El Cielo es cuando sea (Karla Deel)
Title of Artwork:
Heaven is Whenever / El Cielo es cuando sea
Santo Domingo, Oaxaca, Mexico
Materials Used: Cyanotype photography, watercolor paper
Price: $500
Medium: Cyanotype print on watercolor
Date created (Year): 2024
Size: 8 x 10 print matted and framed 16 x 20
Rarity: 1/1
Condition: extremely good
Signature: yes
Certification of Authenticity: Yes
Frame: yes
Series: Memento Mori, remember you will die
About the Work:
In the rich and vibrant world of Oaxaca, Mexico, languages of elders & ancients can still be heard: Pre-Hispanic Zapotec tongues untouched by colonized religion. There is a deep, intuitive communication between the land and people. In the town of Santa María del Tule, you’ll find the largest tree in the world. El Árbol del Tule, a 2,000-year-old Montezuma Cypress, sprawls to 120 feet in diameter. The indigenous name of the tree is ahuehuete, a Nahuatl word meaning “old man in the water.” When the Zapotec civilization still lived in that valley, it was all swamplands. This great tree survives from the pre-Hispanic water that remains deep within the earth, an eternal courtship without the presence of language.
Accompanying poem:
Aqui, Santo Domingo
Title of Artwork:
Heaven is Whenever / El Cielo es cuando sea
Santo Domingo, Oaxaca, Mexico
Materials Used: Cyanotype photography, watercolor paper
Price: $500
Medium: Cyanotype print on watercolor
Date created (Year): 2024
Size: 8 x 10 print matted and framed 16 x 20
Rarity: 1/1
Condition: extremely good
Signature: yes
Certification of Authenticity: Yes
Frame: yes
Series: Memento Mori, remember you will die
About the Work:
In the rich and vibrant world of Oaxaca, Mexico, languages of elders & ancients can still be heard: Pre-Hispanic Zapotec tongues untouched by colonized religion. There is a deep, intuitive communication between the land and people. In the town of Santa María del Tule, you’ll find the largest tree in the world. El Árbol del Tule, a 2,000-year-old Montezuma Cypress, sprawls to 120 feet in diameter. The indigenous name of the tree is ahuehuete, a Nahuatl word meaning “old man in the water.” When the Zapotec civilization still lived in that valley, it was all swamplands. This great tree survives from the pre-Hispanic water that remains deep within the earth, an eternal courtship without the presence of language.
Accompanying poem:
Aqui, Santo Domingo
Title of Artwork:
Heaven is Whenever / El Cielo es cuando sea
Santo Domingo, Oaxaca, Mexico
Materials Used: Cyanotype photography, watercolor paper
Price: $500
Medium: Cyanotype print on watercolor
Date created (Year): 2024
Size: 8 x 10 print matted and framed 16 x 20
Rarity: 1/1
Condition: extremely good
Signature: yes
Certification of Authenticity: Yes
Frame: yes
Series: Memento Mori, remember you will die
About the Work:
In the rich and vibrant world of Oaxaca, Mexico, languages of elders & ancients can still be heard: Pre-Hispanic Zapotec tongues untouched by colonized religion. There is a deep, intuitive communication between the land and people. In the town of Santa María del Tule, you’ll find the largest tree in the world. El Árbol del Tule, a 2,000-year-old Montezuma Cypress, sprawls to 120 feet in diameter. The indigenous name of the tree is ahuehuete, a Nahuatl word meaning “old man in the water.” When the Zapotec civilization still lived in that valley, it was all swamplands. This great tree survives from the pre-Hispanic water that remains deep within the earth, an eternal courtship without the presence of language.
Accompanying poem:
Aqui, Santo Domingo
Aqui, Santo Domingo
Here, a place where the dead gods dwell,
heads detached from bodies.
Here we slip into the unseen world. A tattered veil,
an unfathomable place.
Here, in a temple of impossible angels,
covered in supreme gold and white,
we swim in this cold moon lake, bellied
in deep-water howls.
We are cupped by craters, here, at the cozy, quiet-dark center
of every terrible thing.
Here, swaddled in this soft ritual bath,
homespun, milky, wet. Here, stars are pearls without oysters. At home
without a home. Here,
I cannot feel the twilight—But I know the lamp is in the sky,
spotlighting this populated house
for centuries before
its birth.
Mornings, through the highest window to the east, the sun illuminates
the two-story altar. Here, a shrine
of santos, there a lamb or young pigeon blanketed in its blood. Here, religion, an
anvil.
There, and then, an eternal courtship
without the presence of language, without
the necessity of context—
only weavers of the golden thread.