Smuggling as Resistance: Transborder Nahua Futurisms

The CHR’s annual Winter School takes place between 7-11 July at the Iyatsiba Lab. Its theme for 2025 is the question of Freedom. Alongside its academic programme will be two public keynote lectures. The first will take place at the Iyatsiba Lab on Tuesday 8 July and will be given by Federico Cuatlacuatl.

In collaboration with Zeitz MOCAA

Date: 8th July 2025

Time: 17:00

Venue: The CHR’s Iyatsiba Lab, 66 Greatmore Street,
Woodstock (Enter via Regent Road)

SPEAKER BIO

Federico Cuatlacuatl (b.1991, San Francisco Coapan, Cholula, Puebla -México).  Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Virginia. Cuatlacuatl’s aesthetic oeuvre addresses Nahua Indigenous immigration, social art practice, and cultural sustainability.

Building on his own experience as an undocumented immigrant and DACA holder, his creative practice collides Indigeneity and immigration. At the core of his most recent research and artistic production is the intersection of transborder Indigeneity, migrant Indigenous diasporas, and Nahua futurisms.  Federico Cuatlacuatl visually delineates migration and displacement while smuggling acts of self-preservation, rematriation, and resistance. He smuggles Nahua Mexican traditions and culture to the United States, reclaiming his ancestral Nahua lineage, land, and language. As a DACAmented member of the Nahua community, Cuatlacuatl’s work is shaped by the colonial marginalization and disenfranchisement faced by indigenous communities in México while being deeply rooted in challenging socio-political and economic relations between México and the United States.

RSVP: centreforhumanitiesresearch@uwc.ac.za