Ixi’im’xch’uup

Title: Ixi’im’xch’uup
Year: 2016
Medium: Wood carving (cypress)
Dimensions: 4’8” x 3” x 2”

Description: This spirit of the corn is Sara Warmi in Quechua.  She germinates into wiñapo (corn sprouts) and ferments into the sacred corn drink, Aqha, present in the Andes since ancestral times.  Ixi’im’xch’uup, corn spirit’s name in Nahuatl, comes from the north, from the hot Mayan lands, where people were made of corn, to the south, where she fell in love with our mountains and stayed forever. Corn is the oldest grain that has nourished us for thousands of years. It is linked to the entire cultural process of the Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala (the Americas) as an integrating food.