Map of Amatepeque, Mexico State, 1580 (2021 copy)
akwong
Wed, 12/01/2021 – 20:19
Facsimile by Tlaoli Ramírez Téllez
Combined media, acrylic, ink and watercolor on paper
Los Angeles County Museum of Artwork
EX.8900.28
Within the years following the Spanish invasion, the city of Amatepeque (modern-day Amatepec) grew to become the middle of a silver mining business constructed on the labor of enslaved Africans. This facsimile map, initially commissioned as a part of a land grant petition, has a particular aesthetic when in comparison with different maps on show. Artwork historian Alessandra Russo first famous similarities between the cloudlike mountains as depicted right here and work of hills in Zimbabwean rock artwork. These likenesses might counsel that African artists crafted the unique map, a placing instance of their early contributions to the humanities of New Spain.