Spectros explores the coexistence of Catholic imagery and Tzotzil indigenous cosmology during the Day of the Dead in San Juan Chamula, Chiapas (México). These spiritual traditions do not merge but remain distinct, inhabiting the same ceremonial space and creating a visible tension between parallel worlds.
Inside the church and across the cemetery, saints, candles, flowers, mezcal, Coca-Cola bottles, and Tzotzil prayers form a ritual landscape where pre-Hispanic cosmologies endure within a colonial religious framework. Gestures, offerings, and collective acts of prayer activate ancestral knowledge in the present, as a living social and spiritual force.
An altered chromatic palette—shifting from vibrant ritual colors to subtle spectral tones—introduces a dimension that moves the work beyond conventional documentary language. Color evokes what exceeds direct visibility: ancestors, spirits, and cultural memory embedded in ritual space.
Although made in 2012, the project remains an ongoing inquiry into ritual, survival, and the persistence of symbolic structures across generations in San Juan Chamula.
