Pablo Tut: Land Invention

Between 1835 and 1836, European colonists and the centralized Mexican government fought to control the Texas region. The Mexican government forced Maya men from the Yucatán Peninsula to fight alongside Mexican soldiers. During the 1836 Battle of Mission Refugio, a village located 150 miles south of present-day Austin, several of these Maya soldiers were killed and laid to rest. In Land Invention, artist Pablo Tut traces the journey of these Maya soldiers from the Yucatán to Texas and presents a monument to their legacy.

Central to Tut’s exhibition is an ancient Maya dagger (711 CE) unearthed in Yucatán that features the profiles of four Maya gods oriented in alternate directions. While the dagger’s original meaning and usage remain unknown to archaeologists and anthropologists, the dagger takes on multiple meanings and forms in Tut's work. Using drawing, lithography, video, and steel, Tut places the dagger in the hands of Maya people across time, from the soldiers in Refugio to contemporary artists, historians, activists, and Tut’s family and friends living in Campeche, Yucatán. By recontextualizing the dagger and assigning it multiple uses, Tut challenges its status as a relic of the past, forging temporal continuity between ancient and contemporary Maya peoples. This continuity reaffirms the autonomy and political consciousness of the Maya people across time, landscapes, and everyday life.

Pablo Tut is an artist of Maya ancestry from the city of Campeche. Now living and working in Texas, Tut follows the research of historian and calligrapher José Ángel Koyoc Kú, who examines how two colonial nation states—Mexico and the United States—used and displaced Indigenous peoples while forming a national identity. A publication produced by the VAC is slated for release in Spring 2025 and brings this work and research together.

Presenting support for Pablo Tut: Land Invention is provided through the St. Elmo Arts Residency.