Square Cylinder: Arleene Correa Valencia “Codice Del Perdedor / The Losing Man’s Codex”

"In 2022, Arleene Correa Valencia traveled to Mexico for the first time since her family’s immigration to the United States when she was three. During that trip, the Napa-based artist and DACA recipient visited the National Museum of Anthropology, where the Codice Boturini gripped her attention.

Believed to date from before the Spanish conquest, this 18-foot-long accordion-fold book chronicles the migration of the Mexica (Aztec) people from their mythical homeland, Aztlán, to Tenochtitlán, on the site of present-day Mexico City. Its pictographs recount their travels on foot and by boat, seeking a safe home — a search, the artist realized, contiguous with that of her own immigrant family’s."

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