In collaboration with the Mexican Embassy and CerModern arts center, an exhibition hosting the codices of Mexico, the most important source for learning more about the ancient cultures of the country, is being displayed in the capital Ankara for the first time.
The exhibition "Codices of Mexico. The Old Books of the New World" consists of a selection of 21 facsimiles of the most outstanding codices protected by different international museums and national libraries around the world and made on different materials: amate paper, leather from deer and European paper.
The exhibited codices belong to the Borgia, Boturini and Magliabechiano, Maya, Mexica and Mixteco groups.
Of the thousands of Mayan codices that were written, currently only four are preserved, which date back to the year 200 – or even earlier. Another collection, that of Lorenzo Boturini Bernaduci, was gathered by him as of 1737 upon his arrival to New Spain. Boturini collected not only codices and manuscripts but also maps, chronicles and histories of pre-Columbian Mexico. The documents eventually became the historical museum of the Indies.
The Borgia codices group is made up of books known as Tonalamatl or divination books, the topics of which revolve around spirits and cosmic forces "to guide people’s lives through the spiritual meaning attributed to time."
The codices are a set of pictographic documents made by Mesoamerican Indigenous groups before the arrival of the Spaniards or in the first years of the Viceroyalty that constitute a testimony of the way in which the ancient inhabitants of Mexico lived and thought, in addition to being one of their few historical records that survived the passage of time, the embassy stated.
Held within the framework of the Fifth Centennial, the exhibition aims to serve as a bridge between Mexico and Turkey, two countries with important ancient civilizations.
The exhibition was opened by Ambassador Jose Luis Martinez and curator Alesha Mercado Tuesday with the participation of several ambassadors, media representatives as well as art lovers.
During the inauguration, Mercado pointed out that thanks to the few pre-Hispanic codices that have been preserved to this day, we can understand aspects of the complex structure that Mesoamerican peoples had and their way of seeing and understanding the world.
Likewise, the ambassador said that the codices are testimony to the advanced cultural development of the civilizations that inhabited that region.
Mercado has extensive experience in museology, management, research and curation and has worked in cultural institutions both in Mexico and abroad such as the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL), the National Museum of the Arts (MUNAL), the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), among others.
Art lovers will be able to visit the exhibition until Aug. 27.