Manuel Chavajay: Xojowi ja qa tee ruachulew (Mother Earth Dances)

Manuel Chavajay (b. 1982, San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala) is a Tz'utujil Maya artist whose practice centers on the relationships between indigenous land, cosmology, and cultural identity. Working across painting, ceramics, and site-specific performance, Chavajay employs marine oil and traditional embroidery patterns depicting Lake Atitlán's landscape, alongside intervened earthenware vessels and ephemeral performance remnants. His work articulates urgent concerns about environmental degradation in the Guatemalan Highlands while invoking Tz'utujil ancestral knowledge systems that understand land not as extractable resource but as living, immaterial force—encompassing seasonal cycles, omens, and knowledge-bearing dreams. By centering Tz'utujil language and territory, Chavajay traces historical connections and cultural practices within Guatemala's incomplete modernization and contemporary efforts toward stability.