AMOXTLI O CÓDICE DE LA DANZA RITUAL DE MÉXICO

Hand-printed typographical Letterpress artists’ book created in a Linotype machine by architect, restorer, writer, painter and sculptor Ignacio “Nacho” Gómez Arriola (b. Guadalajara, México 1955), founding member of the artisan printing workshop Taller Gráfica de Comala. Ritual Dance is deeply rooted in the pre-Hispanic past and religious sentiment, is undoubtedly a rich and varied expression of the intangible cultural heritage of Mexicans. This Amoxtli or codex of unusual format -composed of sheets of paper joined and folded forming an extended strip in the style of the ancient Mesoamerican books in which the image and the text complement each other- wants to pay tribute to the centennial survival of the ancestral dance of Mexico. The texts are a very brief selection of pre-Hispanic poems, viceregal chronicles or stories that try to cover a universe of more than five centuries on the tradition of ritual dance. The images of this amoxtli correspond to engravings on some of the many traditional dance expressions carved by Nacho Gómez Arriola and printed from the original plates.