Artist Evelyn Quíjas Godinez crafted a series of vibrant masks using traditional Mexican folk art practices for Más Caras, her 2019 Level Ground residency project that examines one's connection to heritage and home.
About the project
Más Caras is a multimedia visual art installation created by Evelyn Quijas Godínez for the 2019 Level Ground Residency Program and Festival. The show premiered at Nous Tous Gallery in Chinatown on October 11, 2019.
Más Caras—meaning "more faces" in Spanish, as well as "masks" when combined to the single word máscaras—consists of paintings, collages, masks, sculptures, and assemblages. These works combine colorful Mexican folk-art aesthetics with elements and imagery of Toltec, Aztec, Maya, and Olmec artifacts and juxtaposes them against a contemporary Los Angeles landscape. By creating multiple vignettes which often coexist within a single work, the artist emphasized an ever-present connectedness that transcends time and space.
The show featured a live music performance by special guest Luis Perez Ixoneztli and included a bar, panel discussion, and interactive elements curated by the artist.
the creative team
Evelyn Quijas Godínez, creator and 2019 Level Ground
artist-in-residence
Born in Los Angeles, Evelyn Quijas Godínez (she/her) is a self-taught artist working across a spectrum of mediums that bring to life oral histories, inherited traditions, and draw upon intuition. Frequently revisiting the Motherland at the hometown of both of her parents in rural San Antonio Matute, Jalisco, Quijas Godínez brings back found objects, artifacts, and cultural remnants to piece together a fragmented past through her sculptures, installations, collages, and paintings. Her work activates local histories of San Antonio Matute, as well as the distant history of ancient civilizations across Mexico, and emphasizes their presence across time and through borders.
