Handmade Mexico Huichol Nierika Rabbit Deer Beadwork 'eARThiness' Item ID: 2677079044

My name is Kupihaute, which means 'Obsidian Butterfly' in the Huichol language. I was born in 1949 and, from a very early age, my passion has always been to look into my roots to hear the voice of my ancestors in order to know my phatway, my destiny. I have the influence of Michoacan from my father's side and from my mother's the legacy of one of the original cultural seeds of the American continent - the Huichol people.

Since 1992, together with some other Huichol artists, I organized the Huichol Community in San Blas, Nayarit, in order to share with you our ritual arts as a traditional offering, without middlemen. To participate in the project of Novica is a natural convergence that enriches our mission, which is to disseminate our arcane wisdom, our symbolic language, our mystic culture, and our ancestor's legacy, and in this way invite you to look for your own roots to know yourself.

The essence of ritual art is to make it without any sketch or model whatsoever so each piece is an original without a possible copy, and each piece conveys a traditional story of the Huichol people that rises from our deepest memory, from that common ground where all of us are the same people.

The concept of the nierika, or votive painting, is that it is a mirror where two opposites come together creatively. A very clear example is when a man and a woman come together to create a new person. The nierika is known as the tezkatl in the Nahuatl language, spoken by the Aztecs. And in fact the work created by a native of any culture can awaken in both artist and the person who views it an archetype from the collective memory in our genes. Thus, it is a way of sharing this wisdom.

Kupihaute elaborates his designs by applying colorful chaquira beads onto wood or dried guaje gourds - a technique requiring mental patience and a steady hand. The beads are adhered using wax, thus it is important that the works be kept away from strong sources of heat, which could cause the wax to melt and the beads to loosen.