The Portland Winter Light Festival Presents

Portland Artists

Friday & Saturday  February 7 -15

t/F/S February 13-15 2025

Doors open at 6:00pm

MICTLAN

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The installation explores the mythology of the ancient legend of the feathered serpent deity and its
encounter with the lord of the underworld.

Its November in February! Alejandro’s Underworld Mictlan (Mictlantecutli’s Home) Multimedia installation will be part of the Portland Winter Light Festival at the Zone in Downtown Portland OR. The 2025 festival theme is:
“A light for tomorrow: A technicolor future”
Installation explores the mythology of the ancient Aztec legend of the feathered serpent (Quetzalcoatl) and its encounter with the lord of the underworld (Miclantecutli). This story was the beginning of the Mexican tradition of the Day of the dead in Mexico. The approach of different believe systems about the afterlife its a future interpreted and shape based on their cultures. This is just one of those stories of the future from the past.

In mesoamerican Mythology there was a belief in an afterlife. To reach this place, the deceased individual would start a journey through paths or valleys; there, a cleansing process would initiate, until the body became stripped from its flesh. The first step was to cross a river, and with the help of a black dog, to reach the beginning of the journey to the a place of tranquility called Mictlan.