Eduardo Sarabia: Ceiba Sagrada

Los Angeles-born, Mexico-based Eduardo Sarabia has become one of the better-known artistic voices of his generation for using materials and imagery associated with street culture, craft, and folk history to draw connections between his personal story and the narrative of Mexico, the land of his chosen home and ancestral heritage. Often using spray paint, ceramic, and textiles and colorful flora, fauna, and symbols, he creates bold artworks that prompt questions about definitions of taste and the consequences of economic forces, especially on long-held traditions and the natural world.

Ceiba Sagrada presents, for the first time, artworks by Eduardo Sarabia recently acquired by the Museum in an installation designed and realized by the artist. In a gallery overlooking the Gardens, Sarabia paints a mural of sprawling green vines as a lush backdrop for an acrylic and ink drawing of a sacred ceiba tree and a flock of fourteen colorful, sculptural birds. Though the birds are all endangered species, here the ceramic versions are thriving amongst the robust trunk and limbs of a tree revered in tropical parts of the Americas for straddling between the underworld, humans, and the heavens.

Sarabia has drawn within the ceiba’s trunk several mysterious symbols: an open palm, swords, a moon, and a gold coin stamped with a deer and the numbers 1976 (the year of the artist’s birth). Above all of this a golden key, and below a scroll featuring the credo I AM ANOTHER YOU. Though elusive, the symbols seem to honor the power of knowledge, whether passed down through ancestry—the artist’s grandfather shared a story of buried treasure—or culture—quetzal birds were understood to be so powerful in Mesoamerica that its feathers adorned headdresses, including that of Moctezuma, who ruled at the time of Spanish conquest.

Taken together, the elements in Eduardo Sarabia’s installation Ceiba Sagrada seem to suggest that the key to a prosperous and sustainable future is safeguarding not only flora and fauna, but also the ancient traditions that remain all around us.

IMAGE CREDIT: Eduardo Sarabia (American, active in Mexico, b. 1976). Ceiba Sagrada 25, 2022. Acrylic and India ink on paper and a set of 14 clay white ceramic, fiberglass, and cast metal birds, dimensions vary. Museum purchase, Taber Art Fund, 2024.3 a-cc. ©️ Eduardo Sarabia. Photo: Alexandra Hulsey for Dallas Contemporary

Eduardo Sarabia (American, active in Mexico, b. 1976). Installation view of eduardo sarabia: this must be the place at Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, Texas, April 20, 2023-August 2023.