On View At Eaton DC : Nakawe Art Installation

Nakawe is the third installment in visionary artist Marianela Fuentes’s series “Sacred Beings,” an exploration of the story of time. The life-sized cast of this Parasaurolophus dinosaur, currently on display in the Eaton DC lobby staircase, is adorned with glass beads, individually set in resin by hand by Fuentes and indigenous Wixarika artists Lino Kuruxi Lopez and Pablo Muwieri Huta Carrillo. The designs depict an intricate spiritual universe, integrating elements from the natural and cosmic worlds, paying homage to the Wixarika’s eponymous Mother of the Earth. Nakawe’s adornments also incorporate motifs from the Piscataway people who, like the Parasaurolophus, are indigenous to the Chesapeake Bay region.

Paleontologist Jose Lopez Espinoza serves as the project’s paleo-sculpturist and he discovered the Velafrons dinosaur in Coahuila, Mexico six years ago, which was the model for Ichiro, the first installment in the Sacred Beings series. Ichiro lived on Eaton’s rooftop for a year before he was acquired by Google and installed on their campus in Mountainview, CA.

Nakawe challenges dominant notions of prehistory, land, and belonging by uniting indigenous spiritual and artistic traditions with the form of a 75 million-year-old ancient being.