About ITZATNAITZATNA Arts are an emerging arts organisation based in the West Midlands that create cross-cultural collaborations with artists and diaspora communities in Mexico, Latin America, and the UK.
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Creating
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Founded by the father-son artist duo Alfredo Hau (Visual Artist, Writer & Professional Chef) and Sebas Hau (Live Artist & Creative Producer), ITZATNA cultivates ecological, decolonial, and multigenerational approaches to creating cutting-edge cultural projects that combine visual, community, culinary, and live art to create unique experiences for all ages.
As a Mexican-led artist collective based in the UK, ITZATNA is committed to the ongoing decolonization process of Mexican and wider Latin American histories, artefacts, communities, and narratives in the UK. The UK and Mexico have a long history of conveniently forgotten (post)colonial projects including; BP crude oil extraction from the Gulf of Mexico, timber logging in former British Honduras (now Belize-Mexico border), and the looting of sacred historical sites by English colonist and explorers such as F. A. Mitchell-Hedges.
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PRISM photography
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As a family and organization, we engage in a continuous decolonial dialogue of dismantling (post)colonial knowledge systems, in order to recentre the lost wisdom of our indigenous ancestors into our everyday lives and artistic practice. We believe that through intergenerational and cross-cultural learning, we can craft new methodologies of healing to tend to our ancestral wounds.
As a collective, we are passionate about the desperate need for better Latin American representation across all sectors within the UK. For too long have been erased, marginalized, and forgotten by being swept under the proverbial carpet of ‘Any Other Ethnic’ in monitoring forms. Only as late as 2018, did the UK Census and Arts Council England finally ‘attempt’ to even acknowledge our identities by creating the ‘Latin American’ tick-box, which is itself unrepresentative and problematic. |
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The meaning of itzatna |
ITZATNA is pronounced in English as “eet-zat-na’”[IPA: iːt zat nɑː]
The word ‘ITZATNA’ is a Yucatec Mayan neologism - a new, modern Mayan word we have created using two different existing Mayan roots/stems. According to Harri Kettunen and Christophe Helmke in their book ‘Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs’ - the words ‘itz’aat’ meaning ‘sage, wise man’ and ‘naah’ meaning ‘house, structure, building’ Alfredo and Sebas first named the group ‘ITZAMNA Arts’ as a tribute to the Mayan god Itzamna, before realising the immensely preexisting popularity of this among arts organisation and cultural groups across the Mayan regions of Central America. Itzamna was a principal pre-Columbian Mayan deity, ruler of heaven, day, and night. Itzamná was also a culture hero who gave humankind writing and the calendar and was the patron deity of medicine. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Our Collective Members...so far
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Artistic Director & Chef
Alfredo Hau Producer & Co-Director Sebas Hau Producer - Marketing José Canseco Associate Artists Daniela Cristo Fabiola Santana Ben Jones Arron Gill Bianca Beneduzi Paloma Arnaud Michelle Amezcua Holly Clark |
Sound Artists
Xavier Velastín Alex Etchart Video Artist Moisés Mendez Costume and Set Design Emma Fay Writers and Editors Isabel Quiroz Ruth Mestel Videographers Louise Carpenedo Ula Moroz Dramaturgs David Norris |
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