In Axolotl Creation, Sabino Guisu reflects on the power of transformation of each being

The exhibition Axolotl Creation, by Sabino Guisu (Juchitán, Oaxaca, 1986), proposes a reflection on the development of human beings and their interaction with others. It urges a connection with nature, sacred rituals and transcendence.

The exhibition, on display at the Maia Contemporary gallery in Mexico City, brings together paintings, textiles, sculptures, installations and large-format ceramics that address creation as a continuous process, not as a distant origin or as a finished form, but as an active condition of transformation.

“Axolotl Creation It talks about how reality, matter, the world is created. It speaks of the formation of life, which is why an image of a pregnant axolotl appears, creating life. There is also recognition of feminine wisdom, the only being on Earth that can materialize life,” said the artist, whose pieces are the result of research in fields such as anthropology, religion, symbolic psychology and art history.

The project, which emerged at the end of 2022, has as its central figure the axolotl, an endemic salamander from Mexico recognized for its capacity for regeneration and its apparent suspension of time. The term axolotl, derived from the Nahuatl atl (water) and xolotl, refers to the exceptional, to that which inhabits the margins of form. Its colonial translation, “water monster,” reveals a gaze incapable of understanding a sacred and profound perspective.

Sabino Guisu recalled that the project began with a pair of axolotls, with the narrative that there is a parallel universe where axolotls develop a human condition: they are half animal and half human.

“The idea is that other people are for us like a mirror in which sometimes, consciously or unconsciously, we reveal things that we didn’t even know we had inside, aspects of human nature such as emotions, which are considered negative and positive, but in reality it is an energy that is within us and sometimes has to manifest. For me, these are the projections of relationships as a mirror; the first project talks about this human part,” commented the creator.

The mystique of creation

In what Guisu considers the second chapter of the project, the theme of creation is addressed “from all its points of view, such as the ancient contemplative traditions of Mexico or the mystical traditions of Asia and the Middle East, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism. Here there is a bit of influence from all those traditions whose foundation is based on contemplation and observation of the inner nature of the human being. Axolotl Creation “It talks about the creation of reality, matter, the world.”

In the exhibition there is a lot of pre-Hispanic iconography, since Sabino works from the idea of ​​archetypal principles, a language through which consciousness manifests itself.

“In Mexica mythology, the axolotl is linked to Xólotl, a figure of transit, transformation and decline, considered the twin of Quetzalcóatl. According to ancient stories, Xólotl adopts this form to evade death, consolidating the axolotl as a symbol of persistence and metamorphosis. In the exhibition,

In the exhibition, Quetzalcoátl is approached not as an external deity, but as a possible state of consciousness: an integration between matter and spirit. “Associated with the wind and the ascending serpent, its symbolism does not propose evasion, but rather synthesis. The ascension occurs from the earth, not in spite of it.”

Another figure in the exhibition is the heron, which in the narratives of the Mexica world is related to omens, but in the exhibition “it is not presented as an omen of destruction, but as a symbol of transit and renewal. Its presence marks a threshold where the end and the origin coexist.”

Guisu added that the exhibition includes a pair of instruments: “a flute built from an obsidian rock. This was a collaboration we did with the Teotihuacan Obsidian Workshop. This piece is directly linked to Tezcatlipoca and obsidian as a matter of revelation.”

With this exhibition, Sabino Guisu invites the public to reflect that “within each one there is a being that can be transformed into power. We can all be an axolotl that can regenerate.”

Before concluding the talk, the artist thanked everyone involved in this project, his family and those who have followed his career.

Axolotl Creation It will remain until March 2 at the Maia Contemporary gallery (Colima 159, Roma Norte). Visiting hours from Tuesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.