La Luna me hable de la Flor que podría convertirse en Mariposa, y en la Mariposa que podría convertirse en Fuego (The Moon Told Me About the Flower That Could Turn into a Butterfly, and the Butterfly That Could Turn into Fire) 2026. Varied sizes.
Ceramic (various clay bodies)
Eleni Berg’s recent ceramic sculptures draw on the Indigenous histories of Mesoamerica, specifically the K’iche Maya origin story recorded in the Popul Vuh, the foundational sacred myth of the K’iche people. Dating to thousands of years before the region’s colonization by Spanish settlers starting in the sixteenth century, this sacred myth was originally transmitted orally and later recorded by Spanish religious figures. The Popul Vuh features many stories of transformation, in which gods, human ancestors, and animals turn into stone. Fixed in place as eternal witnesses, these figures watch over the landscape, offering guidance and protection to the Maya—the “people of the maize”—across generations.
Sculpted from clay, with intricate details carved into their bodies, Berg’s three ceramic figures reflect mythological processes of transformation. Here clay operates as a collaborator: as an organic material drawn from the earth, clay undergoes molecular transformations in the heat of the kiln to become stoneware, paralleling the metamorphosis of humans into stone. The three hybrid figures, whose bodies combine human and nonhuman elements, are representations of Alnitak, Saiph, and Rigel—the three stars comprising the Orion constellation, the center of creation of all life in the Maya cosmovision. Description written by Tausif Noor.