The third Biennial of Huichol Art exhibit is now showing at the Presidente Intercontinental Hotel in Mexico City, with a collection of 50 masterworks by some of the most outstanding Huichol artists alive.

Artists showing their work at the hotel in the Polanco neighborhood include Hilaria Chávez, Maximino Renteria and Gregorio Barrio, whose pieces have traveled the world as part of different expositions. Maestro Santos Motopohua, the only Mexican to ever be exhibited at the Louvre Museum, will also have work on display.

In an interview for the website Chilango, Jerónimo Martínez, one of the event’s organizers, said that the exposition “[…] is the most important exhibition of the beads and yarn technique because it highlights a work of popular art in the context of the Huicholes.”

The Huichol people, known in their native tongue as wixárika, are an indigenous group from the central northwest Mexico who have acquired global recognition for their colorful bead and string folk art. Each piece of art features traditional symbols, animals and designs of great spiritual significance to their people.

The curated pieces of this exposition – many of which were created by entire families – tell different stories in the Huichol cosmogony about the first deities that lived on Earth before Father Sun (Tawexika) was born. With the use of an augmented reality tool on a smartphone, visitors will be able to immerse themselves in the spiritual meaning of these pieces and the stories they tell.

Technology will be also present in the form of NFTs (non-fungible tokens). According to Martínez, this will be the first collection of Huichol artwork to be introduced in the NFT market in direct collaboration with the creators of the pieces.

The third Biennial of Huichol Art will remain until Nov. 30 at the hotel, located at Campos Elíseos street, #218. It will later tour the cities of Puebla, Mérida, Cancún and Tulúm before it moves abroad to Germany and Qatar.

With reports from Chilango and El Heraldo de México