Amoxtli

Vir Andres Hera

Twee mensen staat in een zonnige straat, een persoon scherp en een persoon wazig, ze kijken allebei in de camera en dragen pastelkleurige kledij in tinten blauw en roze. Two people in a sunny street setting, one in focus and one blurry, looking at the camera, wearing pastel coloured clothing in shades of blue, salmon and pink.
Vir Andres Hera, Amoxtli, Movimcat , 2024, still, digital video, colour, sound, 71 min. Courtesy of the artist and Chinampa

We recognize that the care-full reading of others is an exercise of trust, intimacy, belonging, home-coming. - Legacy Russell

Amoxtli is a collaborative video project combining cinematographic questionings and sound spatialization. Meaning ‘notebook’ or ‘book’ in Nahuatl (commonly known as Aztec), the installation reflects the idea of nepantla, described by Gloria Anzaldúa (1942 – 2004) – a writer, poet, theorist and feminist activist of Mexican origin – as a kind of interstice between all manifestations of identity, and allowing for mutation and multiplicity.

Vir Andres Hera invited twelve prominent LGBTQIA+ activists, artists and technicians to talk about their personal journeys and their identities. Like Sayat-Nova’s poems, the work unfolds simultaneously in Spanish, French and English. Each story is translated or interpreted, superimposing the voices of the translators on those of the performers in a concrete attempt to multiply perspectives. This polyphony of alternating voice-overs creates a sonic fabric that mirrors the film’s visual multiplicity.

Over the course of seven chapters, Hera and their collaborators move from a discourse on home and belonging to a broader reflection on family, community, love, and friendship. They place before us a myriad of ways of self-positioning and self-expression. What we see on screen is the result of a patchwork of languages, experiences, backgrounds, and ways of feeling and listening: the embodiment of hybridity.

‘I was born there, but i came here.
I was born there, and I am now here.
I was born there, and there, and there.
I was born three times.’
- Vir Andres Hera

2024 – set of 5 HD color videos, sound, duration: 71 min.
© With the support of : CNAP: Centre national des arts plastiques, Biennale de Lyon, Institut d'art Contemporain, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, Triangle New York City, Prietologias, Chasen Thajni. FEATURING H. Lo Coletti, Xaneri Damian, Gato que pinta, Daniel Engels, Shakti Aniorte, Aneth, Yvelizra, Gabriela Fuentes Miranda, Vir Andres Hera. DOP: Alexandre Cabanne. SOUND ENGINEER: Eloisa Diez. MUSIC: Mahesh Batsou, Serge Ghazale. EDITION: Vir Andres Hera.
Courtesy of the artist
Portret van een persoon in witte trainingsvest met gouden binnenkant en een kleurrijke bos bloemen op het hoofd, met de vingertoppen van de linkerhand tegen de linkerwang gehouden. Portrait of a person in white training vest with golden inside, a colourful bunch of flowers on their head, with the fingertips of the left hand held against the left cheek.

Vir Andres Hera
°1990, Yauhquemehcan, Tiaxcala, Mexico

Vir Andres Hera is an experimental filmmaker and visual artist whose practice unfolds across multi-channel film installations, sonic compositions, performance and critical writing. Their work investigates the entangled dynamics of diasporic consciousness, exile, gender identity and memory through a radically deconstructed cinematic language. Formally rooted in expanded cinema, their approach challenges linear narrative structures by embracing fragmentation, superimposition, multilingualism and temporal disjunction, and by dislocating the signifiers that sustain a mono-linear vision of history.

Their works have been exhibited and screened internationally at venues including Haus der Kulturen der Welt (DE), La Gaîté Lyrique (FR), Mimosa House (UK) and Luma Westbau (CH). Forthcoming projects include presentations at the New South Wales Gallery in Sydney (AU), the Museo Juan Soriano in Cuernavaca (MX), and the publication of their first work of fiction with Montez Press in London (UK). Hera graduated from Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains, as well as from Mo.Co. Montpellier and UQAM, Montréal. They currently live and work in the French Alps.

Photo: Snake Chamber. © Vir Andres Hera. 2024.