ABOUT US
IRENE ALTAMIRANO
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Multidisciplinary artist, born in 1985 in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, since she was a child she showed interest and taste for the plastic and performing arts, in her childhood / youth training she studied at the IVA (Vocational Institute of Arts) and in her academic formation coursed by 2004 to the 2008 the degree in Combined Arts at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UBA (University of Buenos Aires). Parallel to the academic study she carry's out different circus disciplines and contemporary dance.
At the end of the 2008, she embarked on an adventure and traveled through South America, traveling through Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, participating in movements related with the circus and the arts, giving workshops for children and collaborating in cultural projects in all these countries.
In 2012, he travele Mexico of the first time ... He returned to Argentina and traveled to Brazil for his professional training at the "Escola Nacional de Circo" in Rio de Janeiro.
At the end of 2013 she returned to Mexico ...
Its people, its colors, flavors, music and cultural richness invite her to delve into the search for roots and mystique, until now new to her. This is how he met his life partner Rafael Baca in the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas and in 2016 they created IK-KAN, together.
Together with him, he learns the technique of cardboard, molding, painting and the history of Mexico. Imagining, playing, observing, listening, she began to mold and give life to these mystical beings that are alebrijes, masks and skulls.
For Irene Mexico is art wherever you look, colors, ancestral customs, its imposing nature, its culture, the depth of its roots that are manifested everywhere embrace you and popular art is a reflection of all that, this artistic manifestation of peoples are part of the traditions that we want to preserve and spread,and, why not? reinvent and resinify with the respect deserves it´s ... It is a pride for me to be part of all this, to feel adopted by this land that I embrace and dazzle with the strength of its culture and that I honor and embrace with my hands in each creation, learning from it, discovering it, respecting it.
RAFAEL BACA
Worker of art, easel painter, and muralist, he currently focuses on the exploration and recovery of Mexican folk art. He is a self-taught and multidisciplinary artist, born in Mexico City in 1981.
At the age of 19, he was broke with the academy and went out in search of his path, thus arriving the jungle of Chiapas and the mountains of Guerrero, where for more than 10 years he learned from the womens and mens of those lands; At that time, art became his way of life, finding in the culture and traditions of those remote places, part of the lost history of our Mexico ...
The Mixtec, Tlapaneco, Amusgo de Guerrero and Oaxaca peoples and the Tojolabal, Chol, Tzeltal and Tzotzil peoples of Chiapas, offered him a different panorama from that of his place of origin, there he understood that the millenary roots of our culture are alive in dances, masks , rituals and ancient beliefs of the relationship between human beings and nature. He learned about the correlation of forces between the tangible world and the spiritual world, he witnessed rituals and traditions hidden from the eyes of the vast majority of people, he learned from simple peasant metaphors, he was a disciple of wise women at the foot of wood fire, he learned about magic and the existence of nahuals ...
With the passage of time he embrace that worldview, making it self own, giving it a primary place in his works. In 2016, together with his partner, they created IK-KAN.
For Rafael, the creation of alebrijes is a metaphor, a ritual, it is the creation of a deity or an archetype that lives in our psyche, it is the possibility of bringing signs and elements to this reality that should not be lost in our cultural collective , which survive as beliefs, fears, spirituality and roots that ask to manifest and have a presence in this world. Creating these pieces is honoring and respecting those forces.
He says that the "system" made us believe that our identity was worthless and that we had to assimilate into Western culture; aspire to the material, to economic and professional success as a premise… This took us away from our roots and generated a disconnect between the people, their culture and their mystique.
He, in his work, invites us to weave in our roots, to understand and rediscover those aspects that identify us and unconsciously condition us as a society. It struggles to recover its magical-ritual-spiritual aspect that is background and a figure in our current society...
