Alicia Smith

In Citlacue, the artist transforms herself into the goddess Citlacue and asks her community to give her their wishes. She blesses each wish with a deep breath and the smoke of copal, and then opens her arms to embrace her guests one by one.

As I was making my copilli, inspired by our goddess Citlalicue, “Skirt-of-Stars”, original Tzitzimitl, mother of the gods and embodiment of the Milky Way, I kept coming across new age content on social media. “Send it out to the universe!” “The universe is conspiring to give you everything you want.” etc., and had an idea: what if I let people tell me, as the “universe” their hearts desires? What if I could give it to them?

For this performance I wore my copilli and the regalia I created during my time as an artist-in-residence at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. I was completely silent for several hours as I gestured to guests of gallery to write on a piece of paper their hearts desires. I would read it to myself, place the paper in my Sahumador to burn with the copal, I would scoop the smoke to my chest and press it down to my stomach while I concentrated on the person receiving what they wrote on the paper. After I few breaths I would stand and open my arms to them. I would hug them for several breaths and then release.

It was one of the most powerful performances I’ve ever done. Many people walked away in tears. Some were afraid to embrace me, others melted in my arms.

Strange things would happen before my eyes. People who wrote things like “I wish I had more friends” would let go of our embrace and turn to be greeted by someone who was told they should meet because they would be best friends. Some people wrote heart wrenching things like prayers for sick or injured family members. Some people asked for true love or the fountain of youth. Many parents asked for good health and happiness for their children.

Most people asked for peace.

But my favorite was a little girl who cautiously approached me with her father. "Una princesa?" she asked him. He explained that I was granting wishes lol and asked her what she wanted. She thought for a moment and whispered her wish into his ear to write down. He handed the paper to me with a single word written on it:

“Magia”

(From Alicia’s Instagram)

2024 performance for Monstress at Resonator, Norman, Oklahoma.

In this project, artist Alicia Smith explores themes of sacred energy, embodiment, and the cyclical nature of life and death through a blending of Aztec spiritual practices and the visions informed by her own life. At its core is the concept of Tonanztin—the divine Mother Earth, represented by figures like Coatlicue, Citlalicue, and Chalchiutlicue, who embody the life-giving forces of the planet. Drawing from ancestral prayer technologies, the project also delves into the role of the Teixpitla—those who "wear the flayed face" of the gods, embodying divine forces through masks that symbolize the deep, interconnected energy of Teotl (the Great Mystery). The artist returns to the apparition of the Virgen de Guadalupe, who appeared to Juan Diego as a young Indigenous woman, clothed in stars and accompanied by a snake—an emblem of life, death, and rebirth. As humanity faces environmental collapse and spiritual disconnection, this work reflects on the Virgen’s continued appearances and her message: while she will guide life into the next world, it will be irrevocably transformed. The project invites viewers to confront the urgency of these cycles and their own relationship to the Earth.

In the Aztec language, nouns that define relationship include inalienable possession. This means a Mother always belongs to someone, or someone always belongs to them. Tonanztin is a title given to our Creatrixes" Coatlicue, Citlalicue, Chalchiutlicue, etc. These are all different representations of the life-giving force of our Mother Earth.

In my ancestral prayer technologies the ones who dressed as the gods were called "Teixpitla" which roughly translates to "A Flayed Face" or a person who wears the flayed face of a god. This is important because it is not just a practice of embodying different forces in the world, but is rooted in the fundamental understanding that behind these masks is the same sacred energy animating them. Teotl, the Great Mystery, itself.

As I continue exploring haunting, syncretism, and visions in my work, I came back to the apparition of the Virgen de Guadalupe again. She appeared to Juan Diego as a young indigenous woman. She spoke Nahuatl to him. She was dressed in stars like Citlalicue, Skirt-Of-Stars, on Tepeyac, a hill that was once crowned with a temple to her, a snake at her feet. Not as a predator, but in its rightful place with its heart to the ground, signifying her cycles of life, death and rebirth.

The closer we stagger toward our destruction, toward apocalypse, through extraction, desecration and alienation of her, the more often people report having encounters with her and all her manifestations. Her message is always clear: I will steward life into the next world as I always do, but life will be forever altered when I do it.

2022 performance project completed during Material Transformations residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

This performance art piece meditates on grief, memory, and the ongoing violence along the Rio Grande, particularly in the wake of migrant deaths. The artist sings a Nahuatl poem to the river, invoking it as a keeper of ancestral memory and mourning for those lost, including recent tragedies like the drowning of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria. Through a blood-letting ritual and the symbolism of a rebozo shawl, the artist connects personal suffering with the river's history, asking if it remembers. The work reflects on who bears witness to suffering and the mercy in that act, drawing inspiration from Eve Tuck’s writing on genocide and Rebecca Belmore’s exploration of liminal spaces between death and resurrection.

This project began by exploring alternative histories of land, in this case specifically the Rio Grande river, and creating a map that doesn't define borders but rather restores memories of a place. 109 people died last year crossing, many descendants of those who thousands of years ago crossed heading South into Mexico. Last year a photograph went viral of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria's bodies on the banks of the river after they tragically drowned. I wanted to create something that discussed that time and that grief. For the piece I wrote a poem and had it translated into Nahuatl, which is what you hear me singing in the video. It translates to:

"How much time Great River

Since you heard the good song of the Rememberer-People?

I will sing to you Great River

The good song, long like you, may it remind you

Of the good burial song Great River

You who watches like you are our mother

Watching our breath slow Great River

Dancing in your arms as you embrace us

our eyes you cover

The Rememberer-People Great River

The Cold-Not-Fish of your water

We crossed once before Great River

Now forever here we watch. "

In the piece I am holding a private conversation and asking the Rio Grande if it remembers me, if it remembers us. I am performing a blood letting ritual, which in our prayer technologies, is a kind of blood transfusion to the more-than-human. The ribbon connect my wound to the water, further emphasizing the wound, grief, mourning, blood and kinship and history.

I am also wrapped in a rebozo shawl which has many traditional uses from baby wearing, protection from evil-spirits and burial shrouds.

I have been thinking a lot about who bears witness to suffering. If knowing is witnessing and if that is a kind of mercy. The piece is also about trusting the word of the wound. It feels like people very casually share photos and videos of black and brown people dying and I find myself asking for another kind of mercy in that regard. That knowing what happened and seeing the pain it caused in a community could be enough.

When discussing ongoing genocide, Eve Tuck said: “I am a future ghost. I am getting ready for my haunting.” In this piece I am also giving a nod to Rebecca Belmore’s work “Fringe”. I like to think of it as being the moment between death and resurrection.

2020. Poetry inspired by Aracelis Girmay and Patricia Smith.

With thanks to:

Luca Joan Curleigàse - “Guy Economist”

Gabe Reyes - Video

Russel Daniels - Piercer

Magnus Pharao Hansen - Translation

In I Believe You, the artist transforms into a deer-woman hybrid, cradling a fawn and whispering "I believe you" as she walks down a road, followed by a wolf. Drawing from conversations about trauma and recovery, particularly around the #MeToo movement, the work explores the deep emotional impact of being believed or disbelieved as a survivor of assault. The piece is a meditation on both personal and collective trauma, extending beyond sexual violence to encompass physical, generational, and systemic harm. Through the figure of the deer-woman, the work connects to Gloria Anzaldúa's Cervicide, embodying a survivor’s journey and the trauma witnessed across generations, while invoking a ritual of validation and care.

For the piece I Believe You, I transformed myself into a deer-woman hybrid, with antlers shedding their velvet, holding a fawn in my arms and whispering "I believe you...I believe you.. I believe you.." over and over again to it as we walked down a road followed by a wolf.

There was a lot of inspiration behind this project. Initially I think it started with a conversation I had with artist Caledonia Curry. We were sharing with each other how we both had recurring dreams of protecting small animals. Callie, who has been doing a lot of research and work about trauma and recovery, said something really profound. She told me she believed it was our mind trying to console our inner child.

Over the past year, with the #MeToo movement, a lot of people have come forward to out their abusers and to speak openly about their history with assault. I don’t know if I fully realized until then, how much being told "I don’t believe you" can traumatize a survivor further.

However, it is important to me that this work exist not just about sexual trauma, but physical, generational, and all the other ways we experience it interpersonally and systemically.

In Gloria Anzaldua's "Cervicide" Prieta, a young Mexican girl, must kill her pet fawn which represents her self. The work is a negotiation between the laws of white supremacy and the laws of the land. "Culture vs. Nature". In this way the deer woman can be read as the fawn that survived, as Prieta herself, and as a witness to the trauma. I Believe You is a direct response to, or potentially a continuation of, Prieta’s work.

2019. This project was successfully funded via my Kickstarter.

Teomama is a performance piece that honors the ancestral role of the Teomamas, medicine carriers in Nahuatl tradition, who transported the bones of Huitzilopochtli across Mexico in search of a sacred sign. The artist embodies the Teomama, carrying a female hawk on her back as a symbol of Tenochtitlan, the land where the prophecy of the eagle and the snake was realized. Her body merges with the water and light, creating a contact zone between the human and more-than-human worlds, embodying an ethic of kinship with nature. Drawing on Melissa K. Nelson's work on Native women's bodies as meeting places, the piece invokes the Cuauhxicalli, the offering stone, as a vessel for sacred sacrifice and cosmic blood transfusion, confronting the reality of the earth's hunger.

This piece is titled Teomama, which in Nahuatl means “God Carrier” it was the name given to our medicine men and women who carried the bones of Huitzilopochtli from Aztlan to Tenochtitlan, present day Mexico City.

A few of you might recognize this composition as the image on the Mexican flag, an image of a prophecy. The Teomamas carried the medicine bundles for 200 years down into Anahuac valley waiting for a sign and it was when they reached lake Texcoco they finally saw it. An eagle eating a snake on a prickly pear cactus, a union of sky and earth, so they knew it was safe to build their city here. And so they did, on the lake.

In this piece I act as the Teomama, carrying the female hawk on my back and I am Tenochtitlan, the land, my garment and hair disappear into the water and the light reflected on it. Melissa K. Nelson, an Anishinaabe cultural ecologist talks about the Native Woman’s body that in so many stories acts as a kind of meeting place, a contact zone, between the human and more-than-human life which establishes an ethic of kinship between my body, the water and the sky. My ancestors long understood the abject was a tool for accessing the sublime. In this piece Im the Cuauhxicalli, the offering stone, the one who holds the heart cut from the sacrificed. This is a hawk, eating a quail and it is a blood transfusion to the cosmos. This is not the nature we want to see. But the earth is hungry.

2018. With thanks to Ashley Davis, Preston Lowe and Cheri of Baywings Falconry.

Descent into Mictlan is a performance that draws upon Aztec beliefs about the afterlife, where the soul undergoes a transformative journey through a series of trials to return to the great mystery. The artist embodies the turkey vulture, a symbol of both the hideous and angelic forces that witness and carry the spirit through its sublimation. Dressed in sculpted regalia, she performs as both the guide and the sacrifice, submitting her body to a ritual of consumption and transformation. The piece reflects the process of surrendering the self to the forces of death, confronting the violence of the body’s disintegration, and offering it as a vessel for spiritual renewal.

My piece “Descent into Mictlan” draws upon the Aztec afterlife. In Mictlan the body undergoes a process of sublimation in order to become a part of the great mystery once again. This journey involves walking through a river that flays your skin, walking through mountains which collide together and strip the muscle from your bones, descending into a valley with winds that blow obsidian blades that pluck out your organs, until you are standing before the lord and lady of Mictlan, just a skeleton and a heart until a jaguar comes and eats that last bite.

In this piece I act as the turkey vulture, my metaphor for this process of sublimation, hideous, angelic witnesses and couriers of the spirit. I sculpted and cast a mask for my regalia.

I also act as the sacrifice. The one who submits their body for consumption.

2018. The creation of this project was intentionally intertribal and ambiguous in order to respect the sanctity of existing ceremonies. The dance was choreographed by Muscogee Creek contemporary dancer Maggie Boyett, the music was composed by Jason Brown with the assistance of Two-Spirit Cherokee drummer Wade Blevins.

With special thanks to Ashley Davis and Preston Lowe

In Cihuamichi, the artist embodies La Llorona, the sorrowful figure from Mexican folklore, reimagining her as a symbol of grief, resistance, and survival. Rather than a monstrous figure, La Llorona becomes a maternal force, whose actions are framed as merciful, a response to the violence and trauma of conquest. Drawing on themes of maternal sacrifice and the regenerative power of destruction, the artist connects La Llorona's narrative to the sacred and transformative nature of grief, likening it to the way the Axolotl, a creature associated with death and regeneration, resists categorization and domination. The piece critiques the colonial gaze, exploring how women's bodies have been both violated and revered, and it challenges Western notions of containment and control by asserting a powerful, uncontainable presence that is capable of transformation and resistance.

In Cihuamichi, I act as La Llorona, a boogey man of Mexican folklore. Her story never felt right to me, a ghost made monstrous because of her grief for a future that will never be. Perhaps societal stigmas against sorrow are a kind of thalassophobia. Her narrative originated as the sixth omen that came to the Tenocha people heralding the conquest of the Americas. A woman's intuition is seen as crazed, though history would vindicate her. “My Children, Where will I hide my children?” the Florentine Codex says she keened in the streets at night implying the only place they would be safe from pestilence, rape, and slaughter was at the bottom of the lake, where she soon joined them. I see this as a solastalgic experience, or pre-traumatic stress. The moniker given to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, “savage,” gave way to the ethological term “savaging,” or maternal infanticide. My ancestors believed those who died by drowning went to Tlalocan, our most verdant and fertile paradise. In this way, we could interpret La Llorona’s actions as merciful.

Those destined for Tlalocan received a special preparation to their bodies, with seeds placed on their face, which was painted like Tlaloc. This is an exquisite gesture of the procreative nature of destruction. Germination and conception both require a dismembering before anything can take root. In the creation of life, things often increase as they are destroyed. This piece is about the sanctity of the wound and grief, circumstances that bring you to the precipice of other dimensions, that transform you. This piece captures the feeling of helplessness that arises from ensuing horror unfolding around you and within you. That creates leaks, breaches, and broken promises like the transgression of a ship taking water, like the transgression of a ship taking people. When Europeans came to the New World, they shipped their findings: plants, animals and people, back overseas in menageries for all to see. No solace or comfort is afforded to the dehumanized. Most did not survive the transatlantic crossing. Save for the seemingly unmaimable Axolotl salamander.

The Axolotl is a regenerative creature that exists forever in an embryonic state. It therefore cannot be debilitated, classified, or exercised dominion over. The conquerors memory becomes history and his ideology becomes reason. Axolotls, by their nature, do not console western sensibilities of order and modernity. When my ancestors fished this animal from Lake Texcoco, regrowing limbs, we thought it was immortal and therefore named it after Xolotl, death itself. Incorruptible little Saints. To this day there are folk beliefs of not entering lakes in Mexico while menstruating, lest an Axolotl swim into your vagina and live in your womb drinking your blood. The antidote? A “brave” man putting his penis inside of the host so the creature will bite it, and it can be extracted.

Melissa K. Nelson describes these stories as demonstrating an ethic of kinship where women act as a “contact zone” or the site of interaction between the human and more than human. This ichthyic, primordial creature entangles and hybridizes the woman’s body into something terrifying. Rebecca Solnit says “The permeable borders of the female are what make her threatening to ideas of containment, control, accountability. In her things merge, and from her things emerge." Perhaps Catharsis is a Moirai. Maybe healing is a synonym for dead reckoning. I don’t need saving. I can not be confined to your borders or your cages. “I will be out here like a piece of endless body” wrote Louise Eldritch. If I am going to be a savage, a sacrifice, a monster slain, a ghost, made present by my erasure, let something indestructible rise from me abundant and wholly new. So few of us ever receive reparations from those who have wronged us. Let me metabolize this pain into revenants who might obtain justice for me in whatever way they can scavenge.

(coming soon)

In Erendira, the artist addresses the intersection of anti-immigrant and anti-Indigenous rhetoric, challenging the vilification of Mexicans and Central Americans in the U.S. The piece features a video in which the voice of a Purepecha woman recounts the story of Erendira, a warrior princess who defied colonization, while two Escaramuza riders move gracefully around the frame, holding a rebozo that symbolizes an unbreakable connection to their ancestors. The rebozo, like an artery or umbilical cord, represents a legacy of strength, survival, and resistance that remains intact despite the shifting forces of history. This work reclaims Indigenous and immigrant narratives, refusing their erasure and reappropriating them as an expression of an indomitable, unassailable spirit.

This work was created to address anti-immigrant violence and the intersection of anti-indigenous rhetoric within anti-immigrant rhetoric. The issue that has been repeatedly raised over the years is that there are too many Mexicans and Central Americans coming to the United States. These are a people who represent a reality that conflicts with the settler narrative: an Indigenous Immigrant. The response is then to site our Pre-Columbian origins as evidence of some inherent barbarism while vilifying our fertility. We are murdered at their border and our babies are taken from us. In the video you hear the voice of a Purepecha woman telling the story of Erendira, a Purepecha warrior princess who killed a conquistador and took his horse. There are two Escaramuza riders traveling around the frame, holding a rebozo between them, acting as two shifting points on a map. Regardless of how they change they can never separate or be a greater distance apart. The rebozo takes the form of an artery or umbilical cord. As the women on their horses ride gracefully around the frame the message is clear. Our legacy, our ancestors, our heritage is behind us, regardless of how we move. That legacy is one of strength, survival and perseverance and that is something that cannot be taken away from us. This piece is a refusal of the hijacking of our narrative and our history. This is a reappropriation of our history as new expression of an indomitable spirit.

2018. With thanks to Britini Peel for Cinematography, Jasmine Aisa, Escaramuza Corazon Azteca and Berenice Alvarez for translation and narration

(coming soon)

(coming soon)

2017.