Xochiotia; at El Paseo

Xochiotia, nahuatl (Uto-Aztec language): to tinge something with the smell or color of roses, or to decorate something with flowers; to flower. Xochiotia is the title of a series of five adobe brick monuments set to be built across the US.  With locations in Illinois, Minnesota and New York. 

Xochiotia: at El Paseo is an outdoor adobe sculpture hosted by the El Paseo Community Garden in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. Built during the summer of 2021, the public is invited to envision Flower Mountain, a pre-conquest Mesoamerican afterworld, within the community garden. This sculpture was paired with a series of public programs, including building pottery, making incense, participating in guided meditation, and adobe brick building. These programs hope to engage sensorial ritual acts that allow us to enter the flower paradise. 

In this year of so much tragedy, we can turn to Indigenous rituals and traditional architectural techniques to understand how death is also part of the natural world’s cycles and find a space to celebrate the lives we lost by remembering their intimate fragrance or texture much like flowers themselves. Xochiotia is a project that brings all of those aspects together for the benefit of a community. With support of 3Arts crowdfunding program.

Xochiotia: at Franconia is set to be built in the spring of 2022.