
Fig.1: In the Maya script the word b’alam (jaguar) can be expressed as a logogram representing the entire word (above) or phonetically through the combination of the three syllable signs b’a, la, and ma (below).

Fig.2: Codex Borgia, produced in the sixteenth century before the arrival of the Spanish by the Nahutal-speaking Tlaxcaltec, Mixtec, or Cholulteca people, details the different aspects of the Central Mexican calendar, tonalpohualli. Seen here is page 71 of the manuscript dominated by the sun god Tonatiuh.

Fig.3: Codex Mendoza, produced c.1541 by scribe-artists of the Franciscan school in Tlatelolco, was commissioned by and named after Antonio de Mendoza for the Spanish crown. It covers Mexica history, political organization, and daily life and is written in Nahuatl pictograms with Spanish translation and explanation. Seen here is folio 64 recto exploring the duties of new religious specialists (above) and the different ranks awarded to Tlatelolco warriors (below).

Fig.4: Detail of Enrique Chagoya’s Escape from Fantasylandia: An Illegal Alien's Survival Guide, currently on view as a part of Ink & Thread: Codices and The Art of Storytelling.
Ancient Mesoamerican writing did not make this distinction. Instead, both kinds of symbols were so inextricably intertwined that writing and drawing were seen as closely related if not identical concepts (Fig.1).
This idea is reflected in the fact that both Nahuatl and Maya languages referred to writing and drawing by a single word (tlàcuiloa in Nahuatl and dz'iib' in Classic Maya). Words and images co-existed. Scribes used both to tell their stories and record their histories. But for Mesoamerican people visual storytelling was not merely two-dimensional: it exploded beyond the page into the world through elaborate performances. Interpreters, or performers who understood the complexity of the text, used stage design, costumes, music, and lighting to bring the texts to life for their communities. In other words, unlike most books that rely exclusively on two dimensions—letters printed on the page—Mesoamerican codices existed in three dimensions.
Today, scholars who try to decipher Ancient Mesoamerican stories must reassemble the local history and background in order to tease out the inside scoop. We can’t bring the pages to life in the same way, but we can appreciate the beauty and imagine the performances they would have commanded, complete with sounds and smells.
Mesoamerican Codices
Pictorial manuscripts were produced by the painter-scribes of many Mesoamerican cultures. The Mexica and Maya are the most famous, but the Mixtec, Cuicatec, and Zapotec of Oaxaca, the Tlaxcalteca of Tlaxcala, the Purépecha of Michoacan, and the Otomí of Hidalgo also produced such works. In them they recorded histories, genealogies, and prophecies, they told stories, pushed propaganda. These pages described their place in the world they knew.
When the Spanish arrived in the Valley of Mexico in 1520, they encountered libraries, palaces, and temples full of such codices ranging in topic from religion to government, from geography to genealogy. Seen as essential for Indigenous government, most of manuscripts were burnt by Catholic priests under the pretense of idolatry. Only a handful of codices produced before the arrival of the Spanish survive today (Fig.2). The early Colonial period (1521–1700) saw intense production of Mesoamerican manuscripts, some 400 Indigenous codices can now be found in museums, libraries, and private collections. These feature a mix of European and Indigenous writing traditions (Fig.3). Although many were produced under Spanish patronage, others were drawn as acts of resistance, such as documents to defend land rights and other legal cases brought by Indigenous people against the Spanish crown. They are a testament to the endurance of the Indigenous thought that continued to blur the lines between writing and drawing.
Codices Today
Ink & Thread: Codices and the Art of Storytelling demonstrates that pictorial manuscripts are not simply a historical curiosity. They survived persecution after the European arrival in America. Their three-dimensional understanding of text has also survived the replacement of Mesoamerican writing with the Latin script in most places where codices were produced. Their visual storytelling tradition continued to be an important part of both literature and art in the American continent. The centerpiece of the exhibition, the Tillett tapiz, a 106-foot long embroidered cotton mantle designed by British American designer Leslie Tillett and many unknown hands in Mexico and Haiti, is a testament to this enduring tradition. The recent gift of 112 drawings by Tillett’s son, Seth, showcases Tillett’s extensive research and dedication to studying the workings of ancient and colonial pictorial manuscripts. The mantle cites directly from examples such as the Florentine Codex (1569), the Lienzo de Tlaxcala (1552), and others.
Contemporary Mexican and Chicane artists such as Enrique Chagoya (Fig.4) and Eric J. Garcia (also featured in Ink & Thread) reclaimed the screenfold format and visual storytelling tradition. Chagoya prints his pictorial commentaries on twentieth- and twenty-first-century life on amate or bark paper, the medium that ancient tlacuiloque used, at Shark’s Ink Press in Lyons, Colorado. He worked with Bud Shark to perfect the technique on this tricky medium. Garcia, like Chagoya, uses words and images to record the political and cultural struggle of Mexican American people. Like Chagoya, he draws from American comic books and graphic novels, creating a singularly American visual storytelling tradition.
More recently, Garcia collaborated with DU professor Rafael Fajardo to bring the codex tradition into the digital realm creating a decolonial version of Space Invaders. Video games and other digital media provide artists a path to bring the very foundational idea of American writing tradition, that it is performative and alive. Code-X: Contemporary Chicanx Codices at the Vicki Myhren Gallery at DU (on view through February 23) brings together a number of Chicanx artists that engage with the codex tradition of visual storytelling as a dynamic Chicanx space and includes numerous contemporary examples of the codex tradition that interweave word and image into a three-dimensional space. The inherently American ideas of visual narrative writing through a combination of image and text are very much alive, as they continue to influence American artists.