In Mesoamerican folklore, the jaguar is a prominent nagual, a being with the power to morph into an animal. Moving from one realm into another allows this hybrid creature to act as a spiritual guide through unknown territories. For Anna Ortiz, the jaguar is also a fitting metaphor for entering into a mythic borderland.
Drawing on her Mexican-American heritage, the artist renders remote landscapes through limited, yet vibrant palettes. Ortiz favors subtle shifts in tone and saturation, painting jungle terrain in shades of blues, greens, and pinks. The focused palette emphasizes the fantastic world we’ve entered into, one that appears variable and as a manifestation of myth.
In her new body of work, Shapeshifter, Ortiz expands upon her interest in the borderlands and what happens when time and space collapse. Recurring motifs of an explosive volcano, double moon, and reflective pools of water position this uncanny realm as one in which multiple realities coexist and change is inevitable.
Ortiz’s pieces feel like visual pairings to the work of feminist writer Gloria Anzaldúa, whose conceptions of mixed heritage, the borderland, and the nagual the artist echoes in paint. Anzaldúa’s 1992 essay “The New Mestiza Nation” is a fitting companion to Ortiz’s practice, particularly the following passage:
Certain aspects of identity don’t disappear, aren’t assimilated or repressed when they are not in the foreground. Identity is a changing cluster of components and a shape-shifting activity. To refer to a person who is changing identity I use the Náhuatl term nagual… We shift around to do the work we have to do, to creative the identities we need to live up to our potential.
Ortiz’s Shapeshifter is on view through October 31 at Chart Gallery in Tribeca. Explore more of the artist’s work on her website and Instagram.
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