Edgar Calel, At nu jukukempe / Te traigo arrastrando

In the opening scene of At nu jukukempe, 2017, the camera frame is first filled with an empty path. Moments later he artist pierces the frame and enters the path wearing an orange shirt, holding a white Zantedeschia Aethiopica, and dragging the leafy branch of a tree by his hair. His eyes and face are obscured by a mask of corn root. The flowers are offerings to the sacred hills. Somehow he finds his way, in spite of this sensorial obscurification. “My idea is that our words have their roots in the land and bloom in us and the air.” The work is furthermore connected to Calel’s ideas concerning memory, embodiment, and history. He states that “Our bodies have different roots and branches that occupy not only the physical but also the abstract spaces. For example, I have myself neither lived [through] the Guatemalan armed conflict, nor the Spanish invasion, but as fear is inherited, this memory is present in my contemporaneity.” We see the artist walk off screen at the one-minute mark, and only the soundtrack makes us aware of his presence somewhere out of sight, in the distance. The video ends with a horizontal scan-camera movement through the forest, along the path formerly occupied by Calel. It finally comes to rest in a dark unfocused part of the tree trunk, beyond recordability, sense, and understanding.