portalvegetal



Guendaabiani'
Xigagueta
 2025

Guendaabiani', three standards paintings by Diego Matus for Xigagueta, 2025.
Photo by David Habets.


The term Guendaabiani' is translated from the Zapotec as "the being of all the light" or "the one who joins all the lights in himself." It is, at the same time, a philosophical concept and an invocation of the ancestral knowledge that inhabits bodies, voices and links between generations.

Guendaabiani' is a multidimensional celebration, reflects on the dynamics of oppression from colonial and spiritual symbolism to become an expansive device, dialogues in different phases through herbalism and indigenous worldviews to evoke fertile futures and vindicate the internal strength that is intertwined from the root within a community.

This project arises within the framework of Xigagueta, a hybrid program of community creation that intertweaves reflection, writing and aesthetic production from the linguistic territories of Binnizá and Ikoots.

Each piece incorporates a bouquet of rosemary, basil and bougainvillea, tied with colored slats that descend like ceremonial roots and are intertwined by a Zapotec poem written in diamond to evoke wisdom from multiple layers: childhood, mother tongue and affective legacy.


Ndaaniʼ nisacalate nga gule xtuxhu,
biaaniʼ,
ni nabani nga Xquendabiaani lu’,
xcú naro’ba xti’ ca neza nacubi.

From the waterfall was born,
the glow,
the living light is your wisdom,
great root of new horizons.










Guendaabiani', workshop at Xigagueta, 2025.






As part of the public program, the work was activated through a workshop, where the attendees shared anecdotes about plants, healings and affections, and contributed to the creation of the branches that crown each banner. It was a gesture of intergenerational healing, where voices of grandparents and children, memories and aromas, play and contemplation were intertwined.

Guendaabiani' expands through a walk to conclude the first edition of the Xigagueta public program. Each participant carried bottles with resonating snails, evoking the spiral as a symbol of origin, the sound call as a gesture of invocation and childhood as a portal to other forms of perception.






Project sponsored by Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporaneo.



2026
siempreportalvegetal@gmail.com