Tzompantli at San Nicolas Cemetery

An old tradition is on display on the walls of the San Nicolas Cemetery.  Fifty Mexican artists, using their own aesthetic, pay tribute to the ancient Mesoamerican practice of displaying decapitated heads on what is known as a tzompantli.

A tzompantli is, essentially, a skull rack.  Throughout history, it has been used most commonly by pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultures, who decapitated the victims of human sacrifices and preserved their skills on wooden palisades.  The tzompantli is something of an altar, where the heads of the captives and sacrifices were placed on public display for the purpose of honoring the Gods.

Possibly the most famous of the many Tzompantlis in Mexico is that of the Templo Mayor in México City, which, according to different  estimates, displayed about 60 thousand human skulls by 1521.

Nowadays it is hard to find a tzompantli lying around on the streets of Mexico, although the San Nicolas Cemetery offers a similar sight.  

The Festival of the Death celebrated in the city of Leon, Mexico;  invited 50 artists to develop from their own perception an intervention on a skull. All worked with the same mold in order to have a myriad of options. The wall where the artistic installation is, previously held the crypts of the cemetery. Thus each skull of the Tzompantli occupies the space left by the bodies that were previously in those empty crypts. The wall where the tzompantli is located no longer has space to house more works.

Currently, the project continues on exhibition on the walls of the San Nicolas Cemetery and is flaunting more than 150 unique skulls.