On the evening of the 28th of September of 2023, Mixteyot Vázquez inagurated his first solo exhibition with the painting series Taoltsin to Nemilis. Mixteyot Vázquez is a Maseual artist from San Miguel Tzinacapan, an indigenous community in central Mexico. His exhibition featured six oleo paintings, five of them depicting scenes from the liturgical dance Danza de los Tejoneros. The last painting is a portrait of the sculpture of Tzinacapan’s patron saint, St. Michael Archangel.
In this paper, I examine Taoltsin to nemilis as an actor that allows us to understand how Mesoamerican Religious traditions and Catholicism are intertwined in a contemporary indigenous community. Furthermore, I argue that the paintings encapsulate divine presences from the two religious’ worldviews. Imbued by these divine presences, the paintings were welcomed in the main religious feast of Tzinacapan, as an offering to maintain the balance of the universe and guarantee human and non-human life.