Tlaloc (Lines Drawn in Water), 2023

8:38, color, sound, 16mm to HD transfer

Tlaloc (Lines Drawn in Water) is a handmade cameraless 16mm film of materiality and transformation - an enigmatic otherworld where hues of water evolve into multicolor ecstasies. Tlaloc is the deity of waters, rain, lightning, and growth in the Aztec pantheon. This film explores the membrane of film itself - a moving skin marked by fluid, punctured by light. The protean soundtrack was entirely composed with contact microphones to capture handmade surface markings and gestures. The moving image was made with direct animation, scratching, hand-painting and contact-printing processes.

"The work seems to suggest that not everything that exists can be deciphered or decoded according to the parameters we notice."

-Luigi Starace, "Exploring matter - Time Crystals and Tlaloc, a diptych by Abinadi Meza" in Ordet - La parola al cinema Arthouse (Italy)

"When you watch Tlaloc, you'll see colored stains, scribbles, dots, and more dots, and storms of more dots and stains accompanied by crackling and aquatic sounds. Oceanic. Abyssal...you begin to be induced into a semi-hypnotic state of unreality where everything improbable becomes possible. A languid anxiety begins to long for cosmic surrealism and physical transmutations..."

-Fabricio Estevam Mira, review for Experimental Brasil.