El Corazón del Cerro invites us to peer through the looking glass and witness parallel realities: a chimeric creature hidden behind a black mirror. Inspired by Mesoamerican myths and the sacred images found in the Borgia Codex, this encountered creature inhabiting the gallery space points towards a set of symbols that are Other.

Behind the gallery glass, a soil monster opens its faucet to reveal a screen. The soil monster, inspired by an Olmec monument —known as “Monumento 9”, recently returned to Mexico after being stolen and trafficked in the United States. It is believed to have served as an entryway to a cave. Mesoamericans viewed these internal spaces as sacred sites: meeting points between the living world, the underworld and that of the gods. Humanity was believed to have been gestated within an igneous matrix at the centre of Cohuacatépec or ‘the ancestor’s mountain’. Lava, too, is extruded from the Earth’s bellows, forming a bleeding red wound that scorches and kills everything in its path. Rapidly cooling volcanic rock creates obsidian, a hard, brittle rock used in antiquity to create both mirrors and weapons, not unlike technology’s two-fold use today.

At a time when international disputes regarding the repatriation of stolen archeological pieces abound, Rodrigo’s reference to two stolen artefacts questions the national myths created by modern states and the conflicting values these objects take within these stories. Technology used in the exhibition presents us with twin propositions: its use as a weapon of power and a tool to imagine other worlds