Session 3 summary
Redesigning and Reviving hieroglyphs: Maya and Pipil Tribes
New Maya Language is a living workshop led by Guardians and Frida Larios, facilitating Indigenous graphic language through intercultural books, letterforms, icons, textiles, stones, walls, trees, immersing and emerging from Cosmo vision, collective wellbeing and trans-generational community. Frida talks about her work ‘The Community Buried by an Erupting Volcano’, a special book narrated in three languages: Spanish (in green), English (in magenta), and as a bridge between the two, the evolving pictorial language, which she calls “New Maya Language”. As the story progresses, the logograms begin to replace words. These logograms are her original visual representations of words and concepts, a re-imagination of the images created by Mayan scribes of the classical period (300 – 900 A.D.)And a contemporary interpretation of Maya classical language.
The Mayan written language was not of the people but of the elite, therefore, the proposal of the New Mayan Language can help their allies to understand their history in public spaces or books like this and others to come; or simply be appreciated as an art form. Maya hieroglyphs have multiple meanings making reading them a complex task. For example, the hieroglyph illustrations has four different translations. The representation/spelling of a symbol can change depending on the composition of different pictographic affixes, suffixes and infixes. For example, the BALAM–jaguar– hieroglyph illustration has six different ways of being spelled. The vocabulary presented in the New Maya Language interprets the contents of the Joya de Cerén archaeological site and is an example of how this proposal works. This system can be used freely and infinitely as long as the project of place, public or community space, is led by an indigenous stakeholder. The visual codes we sometimes believe to be familiar can certainly be interpreted in different ways. The Maya hieroglyphic language was seriously performed by its scribes, they respected their Gods and their king’s vision when it came to writing, and nonetheless, it seems in this specific case they were looking for a little artistic freedom and flexibility.
About the Speaker
Frida Larios
San Salvador
El Salvador
Maya and Pipil Tribes
Frida Larios is a typo-graphic artist from El Salvador (of mixed Indigenous ancestry). She holds a Bachelors of Arts from University College Falmouth in Cornwall, England, and a Masters of Arts in Communication Design from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art & Design, University of the Arts London, England. While in London, the former Central American beach volleyball gold medallist, taught at the London College of Fashion and Camberwell College of Arts. She is currently an Adjunct Professorial Lecturer in Visual Literacy and Design Foundations at American University (SOC) and University of the District of Columbia (CAS).
