Artist and Lecturer Showcases Mayan Legacy in Contemporary Art
- Jun 6, 2025
Pablo Tut, an artist of Mayan ancestry from Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, brought a unique perspective to The University of Texas at Austin as the 2024-2025 St. Elmo Arts resident and fellow — one rooted in Indigenous history and shaped by contemporary interpretation.
The residency within the Department of Art and Art History offers a fellowship during each academic year to a recent Master of Fine Arts graduate. The fellowship includes a part-time teaching opportunity at UT, a solo exhibition, a stipend, housing accommodations and the use of an art studio.
Emerging from this residency, Tut’s solo exhibition ‘Land Invention,’ displayed at the Visual Arts Center January 24-March 10, revolved around unearthing Mayan history and bringing Mayan aesthetics to the present through contemporary art.
“Humans socially generate landscapes and land, in a way. Because there’s ways we have a relationship to it, ways we create paths to go to it,” said Tut in an interview with the Daily Texan. “I was thinking [about] the creation of Texas that has been this violence orchestrated by two nation states, the United States and Mexico, and in that way, basically generating how this land has been invented.”
The exhibition featured a variety of pieces; one was a large reproduction of a construction tarp. Cut into it was a Mayan poem, titled “Deep Cavern, Invisible Work,” highlighting the barrier between predominantly white student bodies at North American universities and the Latino workforces that work in the background to support them.
Another part of the exhibition revealed an ancient Mayan dagger dated to 711 CE, which was unearthed in the Yucatán and features the profiles of four Maya gods oriented in alternate directions. Using drawing, lithography, video, and steel, Tut places the dagger in the hands of Maya people across time, from the soldiers in Refugio to contemporary artists, historians, and activists, as well as Tut’s family and friends living in the Yucatán Peninsula.
“It’s a history that not many people know about, (and) probably a history that people from Yucatán also don’t know about.” said Tut.
Further bolstering the central theme was Tut’s recent publication of a book, created in conjunction with the exhibition. Written in partnership with José Ángel Koyoc Kú, the book is titled, “Lluvias, nortes, nevadas: Los milicianos yucatecos en las guerras del Golfo de México, 1835-1840.”
Written in both Spanish and English, the book traces the history of how Maya people were forced to fight for the centralized Mexican government during the Texas Revolution. Tut’s visual work illustrates Koyoc’s new historical research throughout the pages.
Together, the authors offer a memorial to the Maya people who were killed and buried in Texas, as well as those who continued on to fight U.S., European, and Mexican colonial powers.
“It’s a privilege to work with Koyoc and be able to know more about the history of the place I’m from and share it here, which, at the same time, is part of the history of Texas,” said Tut.
See the original interview at the Daily Texan and visit the Visual Arts Center website for information on Tut’s exhibition and book launch.
