Carnival comes as it does every year to San Martín Tilcajete, a town renowned in Mexican folk art thanks to its copal wood carvings, decorated with unique designs and multicolored dyes. This passion for art has also led the community to preserve other expressions of culture, including a unique Easter carnival, where “devils” are the
main attraction.

This project is conceived from thinking about the diversity of possibilities that arise in the person who experiences the carnival when oiling and masking. It is in the precise instant where humanity is replaced with an animal image, when the devils are transformed from anonymity, and they scream, run and hit freely.A masked man gives free rein to his most vital impulses.

“Detrás de una Máscara” (Behind a Mask) is an example of how the workshop Jacobo y María Ángeles has been enriching and disseminating this carnival for several years by recovering its vernacular elements, while at the same time incorporating its own aesthetic vision in which the masks stand out as the result of an anthropological, cultural and artistic process.

This collection has been presented in different venues dedicated to preserving and promoting culture in the country, such as the National Museum of Anthropology and History in Mexico City, the San Pablo Cultural Center in Oaxaca and the Casa Montejo Museum in Merida. For the year 2022, it is expected to travel to the Casa del Mayorazgo de la Canal in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, the Centro de Textiles del Mundo Maya in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, and the Palacio del Conde del Valle de Súchil in Durango, Durango.

*The itinerancy of this collection is in charge of Fomento Cultural Citi Banamex A.C., so if
you wish to acquire one of these pieces, you should consider that its delivery will be in May 2023. For more information, please write us at contacto@jacoboymariaangeles.com

“They gleam in the hot midday sun. In the streets they shine blue or reddish red. Like masters of the world, they shout, run, jump, and jostle. It is whispered that something is hidden under the masks. The townspeople barely hear them and come out to look at them, soon the exclamations are heard: What beautiful devils!”
Cuauhtémoc Peña, 2019