Lifestyle
Art and war: Israeli and Palestinian artists reflect on Oct. 7 and the crisis in Gaza
Rana Samara, a Palestinian artist from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR Images for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR Images for NPR
Rana Samara, a Palestinian artist from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR Images for NPR
In Israel’s cultural capital of Tel Aviv, a vibrant artistic community leaves its colorful mark with murals and other art painted throughout the narrow streets of the city’s ancient Jaffa neighborhood and on the walls of businesses within the financial-centered downtown.
Within this same space is a Palestinian community that has long turned to art as a form of resistance, using it to bring light to the struggles of Palestinians in Tel Aviv, the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Since Oct. 7, much of this work has turned heartbroken, mournful, angry and fearful, as members of these artistic communities confront heavy, unimaginable emotions that are bleeding into their craft.
More than 1,200 people in Israel were killed on that day and hundreds of others were kidnapped by Hamas. In response, Israel launched a now months-old war in Gaza that has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly two million others.
Artists are processing the crisis in a myriad of ways: through paintings of the horrors of war, through anguished song and in dance. The work has been shared in places like Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, where protesters regularly gather to demand the release of Israeli captives being held by Hamas, and on social media, where a Palestinian diaspora say they can more safely post their work than those still living under the Israeli government.
“I think that if art can function as something, not only for the viewer, but for myself, it’s to create a space for reflection and reassessing and trying to dissect and process and understand,” said Addam Yekutieli, an Israeli artist based in Tel Aviv.
NPR spoke to Yekutieli and five other Israeli and Palestinian artists on how the war between Israel and Hamas has affected their lives and their work.
Each artist took time to reflect on Oct. 7 and its aftermath, sharing stories of fear, anger, sadness and pain.
Rana Samara
“In times of stress, usually people go for black, people go for dark colors,” said Rana Samara, a Palestinian artist from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “I found that now, my stress has come out with very, very, very bright colors.”
Samara’s work frequently uses bright paint to explore topics like sexuality, gender roles and other issues tied to Palestinian life. When war broke out in Gaza, she decided to turn to the images she was seeing on TV and social media and weave it into her work.
Samara is part of a group of Palestinian artists that joined with the Zawyeh Gallery in Ramallah to create work to help raise money for humanitarian aid in Gaza.
“What caught my mind and heart in what I was watching about this war was the issue of children. And so I looked and I concentrated on what each child was carrying” as they evacuated their homes in Gaza, she said.
For one piece, Samara decided to create a type of poster of these different scenes of children fleeing their homes using bright reds and pinks. Using the image of the children’s piggy bank, for example, she incorporated the war.
“My idea was a piggy bank and inside a tank,” she said. At first look, it’s an attractive, colorful, bright picture, “but when you get close to it, it’s the bleak image. It’s the tank.”
Michal Worke—an Israeli artist with Ethiopian roots, shares her studio space and artwork.
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
Michal Worke—an Israeli artist with Ethiopian roots, shares her studio space and artwork.
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
Michal Worke
Before Oct. 7, many of Michal Worke’s paintings had rich purples and vibrant patterns that reflected her travels in Ethiopia and South Africa.
But now, the colors in her latest works are muted with blues and grays.
“It started with the shock of the kidnappings, and the murders and disasters,” she said of the attack by Hamas militants.
Worke, who is a Jewish Israeli of Ethiopian descent, found that the footage on social media and on the news of the attack wove itself into her psyche.
“I think I responded like everyone to the trauma that we saw. It was really hard for me. I started having dreams that they are coming for me, and they start shooting and I didn’t know where to hide or where to go,” she said.
In the early days after the attack, Worke said she was avoiding the studio and turning more inward to collect her thoughts and take stock of her emotions.
Michal Worke—an Israeli artist with Ethiopian roots, shares her studio space and artwork.
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
Michal Worke—an Israeli artist with Ethiopian roots, shares her studio space and artwork.
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
Worke is a painter that has long advocated for the release of Avera Mengistu, a fellow Israeli of Ethiopian descent that has been in Hamas custody for nine years. She regularly paints Mengistu and his family, sharing her work online.
Since Oct. 7, she’s seen the abundance of artwork created in honor of the fallen and the more than 240 hostages taken by Hamas that day, of which more than 100 remain in captivity.
“But not for Avera. He isn’t there, his face isn’t anywhere,” she said.
So, in response she’s worked to continue to amplify Mengistu’s story so that he isn’t forgotten.
Worke has also begun painting other things about the war and the interconnectedness she is finding between the war and her Ethiopian community.
“Many Ethiopian soldiers have died,” she said. “Ninety percent of Ethiopians [in Israel] go to combat units. It’s the highest percentage of any community. So many have died.”
She’s incorporated the untold stories of Israeli soldiers of Ethiopian descent fighting in Gaza into works that also raise awareness for Mengistu.
In one piece, a soldier dressed in his uniform is sitting comfortably by a fence splitting southern Israel with Gaza. On the margins, Worke includes the number of days Mengistu has been in custody. Along the ground of the painting are pieces of bloodstained uniforms.
“This is from a series of larger paintings I’m working on. And you can see the jump between this painting and the others. The difference in the colors and the themes,” she said. “These paintings were done only three months apart.”
Renowned singer-songwriter Bashar Murad on his studio balcony in East Jerusalem.
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
Renowned singer-songwriter Bashar Murad on his studio balcony in East Jerusalem.
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
Bashar Murad
Bashar Murad has long used pop music as a tool to express his experience as a Palestinian born within the “oppression” of the Israeli government, he said.
“I create pop music that kind of reflects my experience as a human born in this place and all the complexities that come with being born in this place,” he says. “I believe in the power of pop music to reach the masses to help share and spread messages of equality and love, which is what pop music is all about.”
Murad frequently used social media to share his music and thoughts. That all changed shortly after war broke out in Gaza.
He said the feelings of depression and shock that struck him in the hours and days that followed left him homebound and essentially bed-ridden.
“For the first 20 days, I didn’t go out of my room, basically,” he said.
“The sad thing is that for a lot of people in the world, this feels like it’s the first time that these events are happening,” Murad said. “We have gone through a cycle of this ongoing violence. I’ve already written countless songs already throughout the years that actually talk about the same feeling that I’m feeling now. Maybe now it is times 1 million. But it’s the same feeling. It’s the same feeling of powerlessness and helplessness.”
This time there also emerged a new level of fear that Murad and other Palestinian artists hadn’t quite felt before. After the war began, Palestinians in Israel reported discrimination, firings and other threats of violence for simple social media posts criticizing the war.
That scared many Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza into silence, Murad said.
“It’s very dangerous for us artists, right now. There’s major censorship that is happening,” he said. “There is a war on the ground, there’s a war on social media, but there’s also a mental war and a war on our identities.”
Murad said he is trying to “be smarter with what I post” — a sentiment that Samara, the painter in Ramallah, also shared.
He said the fighting is not just a war with Gaza, “It’s a war on all Palestinians and all Palestinian identity.” He called it a “continuous struggle,” adding, “it’s not something that starts with an attack and ends with a ceasefire.”
Artist Addam Yekutieli with his dog in his studio. He works with testimonials from Palestinians, Israelis and others, including images of wounds and healing.
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
Artist Addam Yekutieli with his dog in his studio. He works with testimonials from Palestinians, Israelis and others, including images of wounds and healing.
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
Addam Yekutieli
“In how many ways can your heart break?”
“Whose trauma speaks louder than whose?”
“Can we ever be well?”
These are questions Addam Yekutieli has had rolling around in his mind ever since Oct. 7.
Yekutieli is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tel Aviv. In his ongoing projects, he has reflected on the ideas of scars and borders and the effect they have on people geographically, physically and psychologically.
“I’ve always dealt with kind of like political or social themes, but for a very long time, they were much more metaphorical than they are now,” he said.
Yekutieli, like Worke, found it difficult to return to his normal workload after Oct. 7. About a month after the attacks, Yekutieli spoke about how his work has changed since the outbreak of the war.
“I haven’t really made any art since October 7,” he said in November. “I’ve been mainly writing since then.”
Artist Addam Yekutieli works with testimonials to make a collage.
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
Artist Addam Yekutieli works with testimonials to make a collage.
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
And what he’s been writing is a long list of questions he has on his mind and has shared it on social media. He calls these posts “questions with no answers.”
“Over the past month and a half, I’ve had so many internal conversations and dialogues and kind of been really like talking myself into circles,” he said.
He posts questions like “What are your five stages of grief?” and “If you had it your way, what would happen?”
“I think that I just feel more comfortable with asking questions more than making statements. They feel more honest. It feels more of an authentic place to be in. And, I think that it also allows more reflection,” he said.
He said the tragedy shook him on a foundational level.
“I think that there are parts of me that feels very naïve. But it feels like everything is spiraling out of control, and becoming progressively worse and worse,” he said.
Yekutieli acknowledged that as an Israeli artist he has a level of privilege to more comfortably share his thoughts and questions on a public domain like Instagram than his Palestinian artist peers who fear reprisal for doing so.
He believes a lot of the hostility toward Palestinians, activists and Israelis critical of their government comes from a place of deep desperation and grief.
“I think that things are very, very emotional,” he said. “And at the same time, I really think that it’s important, as much as we can, and as much as one feels comfortable with, to keep on being vocal.”
Hanna Tams (left) leads a dance class in his studio in East Jerusalem. Since Oct. 7, Tams says that he’s been able to use dance to express himself amidst the oppression he feels as a Palestinian in Jerusalem. ‘It’s not easy,” he said, “but I believe that it is really an important time to use dance.”
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
Hanna Tams (left) leads a dance class in his studio in East Jerusalem. Since Oct. 7, Tams says that he’s been able to use dance to express himself amidst the oppression he feels as a Palestinian in Jerusalem. ‘It’s not easy,” he said, “but I believe that it is really an important time to use dance.”
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
Hanna Tams
Dance has always been a source of healing for Hanna Tams, a professional dancer that specializes in contemporary and dabka styles.
As a Palestinian living in Jerusalem, Tams has faced oppression his whole life, he said. After the war broke out, it became even more complex and tense than before, he said.
“I was lucky to find dance as a friend,” he said. “I can resist through dancing. Other people don’t have this luxury.”
Tams is the founder of Douban Art Studio, which he opened in 2020 to serve his community’s youth to work through their emotions and struggles in a safe way.
But after Oct. 7, he retreated into himself and closed the studio for two weeks.
“I really wasn’t able to do anything and I wasn’t feeling up to dance. I was sick,” he said.
It was the community he’s worked to serve that reached out to beg him to reopen and help the kids stuck at home.
Dancers rehearse in Hanna Tams’s studio in East Jerusalem.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
Dancers rehearse in Hanna Tams’s studio in East Jerusalem.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
They told him, “‘It’s the kids who are suffering. The kids have no school, they are at home and they are watching TV with us. They are afraid,’” Tams said.
He reopened the studio, but not without difficulty. The studio is in East Jerusalem, in an area where Israeli soldiers constantly patrol the streets and stop Palestinian residents.
“It’s really frightening because every time I will be approached by a soldier who starts asking me why you’re coming here and you’re not allowed,” he said.
In November, Tams was able to perform in a timely show in Switzerland called “Last Things Remaining.” The show involved four dancers telling the story of Palestinians and the resilience it takes to live in this region.
He returned saying, “I need to serve this community. I need to serve these people who don’t have anything.”
When asked how he could still turn to art and especially dance in such a hard time, he said, “For me, the only way I can really help and I can really kind of connect, it’s [through] dancing.”
He continued, “I think art is kind of the language of every culture, and it’s the language of hearts. So if you want to [get at] every heart, I think art is needed.”
Oren Fischer—an Israeli artist—shares his sketch book in a park outside a cafe. He is from a kibbutz in the south of Israel, and creates political commentary on recent events.
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
Oren Fischer—an Israeli artist—shares his sketch book in a park outside a cafe. He is from a kibbutz in the south of Israel, and creates political commentary on recent events.
Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR Images for NPR
Oren Fischer
After the war started, Oren Fischer said he reached a point where he just couldn’t deal with any more words.
“So I started painting,” he said.
In the first two weeks after the attacks, Fischer said he slept horribly and had nightmares based on what he was seeing on TV and social media.
He decided to make a change: Instead of doom scrolling each morning, Fischer would instead wake up and meditate on his feelings and “just try to puke it on the papers.”
Fischer, an artist who uses different mediums in his work like video, illustration and textiles, has been using paint and crayon in his sketchbook for these daily pieces. He describes his paintings as “childish” and “naïve” in a way even as it portrays horrors of the Oct. 7 attacks and the war.
“I thought, okay, if it’s bothering me, it’s probably something people really relate to. It’s probably not just me thinking about this,” he said.
“It helped me to heal myself. I made sort of a routine that I wake up and for a few hours I paint and upload on social media,” he said. “So I created my own world inside the catastrophe.”
Oren Fischer’s political cartoon of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR Images for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR Images for NPR
Oren Fischer’s political cartoon of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR Images for NPR
Like much of his past work, this series of paintings has been deeply critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, blaming their policies as the spark that led to the attack.
Fischer painted a sketch of Netanyahu with vibrant reds, yellows, oranges and blues of the prime minister with blood on his hands. In the background are Hamas attackers shooting people and homes burning. The image was later used on the cover of an Israeli newspaper.
Fischer said his work has been criticized by some people who misunderstood his sketches as him attacking Palestinians, when the work is really turning criticism to the Israeli government.
Ultimately, Fischer said the impact of the attacks and the ongoing war “is everywhere. You cannot hide from it.”
NPR’s Jaclyn Diaz reported from Tel Aviv, Ramallah and Jerusalem. Freelance producer Eve Guterman contributed to this report.
Annuals include flowers like marigolds and nasturtiums. They grow fast but won’t come back the next spring (though they will drop seeds and possibly propagate). Perennials like lavender and sage will return year after year, but they may take longer to grow. Wildflower and pollinator packets often contain both annual and perennial seeds but are frowned upon by some serious gardeners, because the selection can be haphazard and ill-suited to the area.
It’s a good idea to exercise a little situational awareness. How much rain can you expect? How much sunlight? Dig the earth and feel it between your fingers — is it sandy? Loamy? These are things to keep in mind as you prepare for your journey into horticultural chaos.
“You want to prepare your soil, your site, at least a little bit,” said Deryn Davidson, a sustainable landscape expert at Colorado State University Extension in Longmont, Colo. “Try to get rid of weeds. Make sure the soil is ready to receive seeds.”
Davidson, who has written about chaos gardening, strongly advised covering the seeds with a layer of soil, lest they become bird food. As for watering, that depends on where you live, she added. On the whole, though, the formula is straightforward: “Soil, sun and water is what these seeds need,” Davidson said.
Not everyone is a fan of the trend, or at least the way it has been portrayed on social media. “Nature is not chaos — nature is pattern,” said Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and the author of “Braiding Sweetgrass,” which recommends imbuing modern life with Indigenous wisdom.
“It seems unrealistic,” Kimmerer said of the chaos gardening videos she has watched. The feeling of effortlessness they convey — a common social media effect, almost always the result of deft editing — seems to elide the work that goes into a garden, whether chaotic or not, she suggested.
“I want my garden to be natural and biodiverse,” she said. “That’s a good impulse. I don’t think this technique is going to get you there, but that’s an important impulse.”
Boitnott, the maker of the viral video, offered a simple reason for why chaos gardening has become popular: “It just makes you happy.”
Admission: I suffer from eyestrain. Even right this very second. As a reporter working on a computer more than eight hours most days, my eyes often feel fatigued and itchy by evening.
I’m not alone: More than half of the U.S. population lives with computer vision syndrome, also known as digital eyestrain, and nearly 16.4 million Americans suffer from dry eye syndrome. So I was especially excited to stumble on New Vogue Spa, in the City of Industry, which offers a relaxing, if intriguing, treatment called “Eyeball Care” — something I’d never heard of before at a day spa.
New Vogue Spa is an Asian-style spa with Korean and Chinese influences. The spa’s offerings include massages and body scrubs — I was curious about the “Red Wine Body Scrub” — but I couldn’t help exploring eyeball care, which was much needed after my 50-minute drive from Silver Lake. (The City of Industry is about 30 minutes from downtown L.A. without heavy traffic.)
So it came to be that I found myself lying on a massage table, wearing what looked like protruding diving goggles, with clouds of cool, aromatic steam oozing from both sides of it and engulfing my face. A spindly plastic tube extended from my forehead to the “Eye Spa” machine. Serene spa music, a blend of classical piano and loudly chirping birds, trilled in the background as the machine sloshed and gurgled. It felt like lying, creekside, in a spa robe wrapped in a blanket of chamomile and rosemary-scented fog.
-
Share via
As my esthetician, Jenny Chen, adjusted the eye mask and added essential oils to the mist, New Vogue manager Lesley Xie explained that the 60-minute, $125 Eyeball Care treatment aims to hydrate and stimulate blood circulation in the eye area, decrease puffiness and dark circles and aid eye fatigue and dry eye syndrome.
“It’s really helpful for overall eye health for people who are on computers for a long time or sleep really late or who are reading a lot,” she said.
2
1. The Eyeball Care treatment included a mask filled with cool, aromatic steam to help relieve fatigued eyes. 2. Slippers in the Himalayan Salt Room.
Xie said that eyeball care treatments are common in China. When she was growing up in Guangdong in Southern China, elementary school students were given a break every afternoon to perform “eye exercises,” which involved gently massaging pressure points around their eye areas, for 5-10 minutes.
“It released eye stress because we studied from eight o’clock in the morning until almost noon time,” she said. “It was a break for our eyes to prevent nearsightedness and tired eyes.”
New Vogue Spa’s treatment was supremely relaxing from the onset — part Head Spa, part facial, part eye care. Chen began by massaging my scalp for about 10 minutes, as I tried not to fall asleep.
Next she cleaned my face, applied massage cream and gently massaged my face and eye area, manipulating the outer corners of my eye sockets as well as under my brow bones and on my temples. She was precise and firm but careful — as she pressed on the outside corner of my eye, I felt tension draining down the side of my cheek and neck.
Esthetician Jenny Chen conducts “Golden Eye therapy” on reporter Deborah Vankin.
Xie said the massage is based on traditional Chinese medicine, focusing on stimulating acupressure points around the eyes.
“Gentle massage of these areas is believed to help promote blood circulation, relax the muscles responsible for focusing and relieve visual fatigue,” she said. “While it’s not a medical treatment for vision conditions, it’s widely used as a preventative and restorative method.”
The massage was followed by “Golden Eye therapy,” during which Chen used an electronic device on my face with a metal roller ball on it. It uses “ultrasonic vibration technology,” Xie said, to help the skin absorb the applied moisturizing cream and combat eye puffiness.
The main event was the “cooling steam therapy,” which Xie said was meant to be calming and refreshing and help relieve tired eyes. Chen fitted me with what looked like an enormous diving mask that quickly filled with cool, hydrating mist — I felt droplets of water dripping from my eyes and down my cheeks. The Eye Spa machine uses a “cold mist atomization process,” Xie said, “that disperses micro-particles of moisture combined with soothing essential oils.”
At the end of my treatment, Chen gave me under-eye gel pad masks, for added hydration, while conducting one last head massage. She applied moisturizing eye cream, face cream and sunscreen before sending me off.
Dr. Kristina Voss, an ophthalmologist with Keck Medicine of USC, was enthusiastic about the Eyeball Care treatment.
“It sounds wonderful. Anything that makes you feel good, I generally support,” she said. “It sounds safe because they’re not putting pressure on the eye. Direct pressure on the eyeball [is dangerous]. And I’d be nervous if they were putting something in the eye, but they’re not. Steam, or even cool condensation from a humidifier, is effective for dry eye. Massaging pressure points probably doesn’t treat dry eye, but could potentially treat eyestrain or tension headaches that can be interpreted as eyestrain.”
Los Angeles Times features writer Deborah Vankin inspects her eyeballs after her treatment.
Temporary relief aside, however, Voss warned that the treatment is not a replacement for seeing a doctor if a condition is ongoing.
“It’s relaxing and complementary to a doctor’s dry eye treatments — like medicated drops or in-office treatments — but it’s not a simple fix or cure all,” she said. “Ongoing doctor’s care would be important.”
After my treatment, I was invited to linger in the co-ed Himalayan Salt Room and Red Clay Room or woman-only spa area, complete with a warm soaking tub, lounge area and treatment rooms for body scrubs. (I skipped the adjacent New Vogue MedSpa, where you can get botox, dermal filler or microneedling treatments.)
Guests are also treated to a cup of homemade snow fungus tea (made from tremella mushrooms) with a single jujube, or red, date, floating inside. New Vogue makes a fresh batch every morning for guests, simmering the collagen-rich drink so long it becomes somewhat gelatinous.
2
3
1. The Himalayan Salt Room. 2. The co-ed lounge area. 3. The Red Clay Room.
“Snow fungus focuses on deep hydration and skin plumping, while red dates support circulation and a healthy glow,” Xie said, calling the concoction “a warm bowl of snow fungus and red date soup.”
I can’t speak to the medicinal benefits of snow fungus tea. But after a glass of the warm, woody-tasting drink — together with the hour-long tension-taming eye treatment — I saw the world in a whole new way while walking out the door: clearly, from a relaxed perspective and with the bigger picture in focus.
This article is part of our Design special section on retrofits.
In Mexico City’s urban core, history runs deep. Beneath the 19th-century buildings erected after Mexico’s independence and the Baroque structures that remain from the Spanish colonial city lie the ruins of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.
Preserving historical structures in the city center is dauntingly complicated said Javier Sánchez, whose architectural firm JSa recently retrofitted a 17th-century house steps from the Zócalo, the main square. What spurred him to take on the project? Chocolate.
“Cacao offers this connection between past and present,” said Agustín Otegui, whose family was involved in commissioning JSa in 2013 to turn the three-story building into the city’s Museum of Cacao & Chocolate. (The institution is part of a network in the Americas and Europe that are devoted to the history of chocolate.) Speaking in a video interview, he added, “You have this bean that was used by the Maya and Aztecs, and now it’s a daily delicacy. It’s a link to the past that keeps going.”
Having designed an extension of the Spanish Cultural Center a few doors from the museum, JSa was familiar with the complexities of working in the historic core. In that project, which was completed in 2012, the ruins of a pre-Hispanic school for the nobility were uncovered on the site. Now, the architects, extrapolating from Spanish maps of Tenochtitlan, had reason to believe that they would encounter another such ancient structure.
Supporting this hypothesis was the 17th-century building’s slant, Aisha Ballesteros, the JSa partner who led the museum’s design, said in a video interview. Many buildings in Mexico City are sinking because of the gradual settling of the underground lake bed; the angle in this particular case suggested that there was something below ground propping it up.
That something turned out to be what the Mexican government describes as one of the country’s most important archaeological finds: a section of a tzompantli, or wooden rack
displaying more than 650 human skulls belonging to people who were believed to have been
sacrificed in the 15th-century reign of the Aztec kings Itzcoatl, Ahuízotl, and Moctezuma
Ilhuicamina. Other tzompantlis have been discovered, but this one — the Huei, or great, Tzompantli — is the biggest and best preserved.
What followed was an 11-year effort to excavate and stabilize the Huei Tzompantli below ground while working on the colonial building above. What’s more, the architects designed a five-story museum addition — one of just a handful of contemporary structures built in the historic quarter in the last two decades — to fill the empty space behind the 17th-century building.
“We were facing three important histories,” Ballesteros said. “Ours, the pre-Hispanic and the colonial one. It was important for us to remember that we are only a small part of this 500-year timeline.”
The design centered on a plan to safely showcase the ancient skull rack and let the colonial building shine, with the contemporary building conceived as a quiet presence where additional museum programs could be housed.
After stabilizing the colonial building — Ballesteros said it was like placing footings underneath the legs of a table that is wobbling — builders sank 100-foot-deep pilings to establish a solid foundation for the new structure. This contemporary building was clad in local, sand-colored travertine, a nod to the volcanic stone composing much of the historic center’s architecture and a quiet presence among the more venerable showplaces.
The two museum structures come close, but never touch. “We separated the new building so that you could see the historic walls, but also because of seismic requirements,” Ballesteros said. In many places, the contemporary addition’s right angles draw attention to the colonial building’s tilt. “It becomes a play between old and new, crooked and straight.”
Between them is a courtyard that allows anyone to pick up a beverage from the cacaotería — a chocolate and coffee shop at the museum’s street level — and catch a glimpse of the chefs making chocolate in the nearby prep kitchen. An open-air corridor illuminated by hand-hammered copper light fixtures leads to a courtyard with shade trees and seating. Eventually, visitors will be able to view the ancient skull rack through a window next to the ticket office.
Those with tickets can visit the exhibitions that start on the second level, tracing the history of cocoa from its Mayan roots to the chocolate we consume today. The circulation path moves from within the building to outdoor terraces, allowing visitors to take in the architecture from different perspectives.
There, as in the rest of the museum, can be seen the layered architectural fabric making up the city’s past and present.
“The project showcases Mexico’s richness of heritage without making our contemporary heritage any less important,” Sánchez said. “It is possible to recuperate our history, but also make our city be alive at the same time.”
-
Sports2 minutes agoMissouri running back Ahmad Hardy in stable condition after getting shot at concert
-
World14 minutes ago‘We need to make up our mind’: EU split over direct talks with Russia
-
News44 minutes agoWhite House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting suspect pleads not guilty in federal court
-
New York2 hours agoHow a Writer and Literary Agent Lives on $48,000 in Riverdale
-
Detroit, MI3 hours agoBruno Mars shines in Detroit – Detroit Metro Times
-
San Francisco, CA3 hours agoSan Francisco Giants vs Los Angeles Dodgers Live Stream: How to Watch MLB
-
Dallas, TX3 hours agoDallas Cowboys Announce Opponent, Date & Time for Week 1 of 2026 NFL Season
-
Miami, FL3 hours agoFlorida fire map shows live updates on wildfires burning in Broward and Miami-Dade