Chagoya Codex: Les Aventures des Cannibales Modernistes

Chagoya’s experiences living in Mexico, the U.S., and France influenced the cultural synthesis found in his work. While on sabbatical in Paris in 1999, Chagoya applied to view one of the few remaining original Mayan codices, currently held by the Bibliotheque Nationale.  He requested to view the text as a part of an essay for the Los Angeles Contemporary Art Museum on the importance of Pre-columbian work, and included his qualifications as a professor at Stanford University. The French denied his request, citing concerns that a few years prior, a Mexican nationalist had stolen one of the Mesoamerican codices. Les Aventures des Cannibales Modernistes became Chagoya’s reaction to the affront, and it prominently lampoons aspects of French and American culture. The title itself is in French instead of previous codices’ Spanish titles, a nod to the Bibliotheque’s snub. Although he focuses on French colonialism and cultural imperialism through art collection, Chagoya critiques consumer culture as a whole, as it strongly impacts national identity in the global era.

Les Aventures des Cannibales Modernistes focuses primarily on imagery from France, the U.S., and Mexico, championing Mexican nationalism over foreign cultural imperialism. Cultural diffusion and appropriation has been a recurring theme in his artwork, especially in his series of modern codices. The works in the series are all based off of the pre-Columbian Maya codex, but feature popular and cultural icons from a variety of time periods. Through “reverse modernism,” the term Chagoya uses for his combination of alternate history, reverse anthropology, and cultural intermixing, Chagoya’s work offers social and historical commentary from oft-overlooked perspectives. The result is a culturally dense collage of disparate time periods and civilizations, made to look as ancient as a real codex using both art style as well as staining techniques and handmade amate paper. The codex is also meant to be read right-to-left, true to its Mayan predecessors, and must be unfolded completely in order to see the images.