"My first approach to western art was through the work of Piet Mondrian "Composition" (1929). In 1999, I entered the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas Rafael Rodriguez Padilla in Guatemala where I met the artist and researcher Roberto Cabrera (Guatemala, 1939- 2014), who inspired and motivated me to carry out my artistic research from my roots, from the insistence of not forgetting where I come from as an indigenous Maya - Tz’utujil, an ethnic group located in the southwestern basin of Lake Atitlan, where I live and work.

Being Tz'utujil and producing works of art requires that I transport myself with the language in the medium of collective experience as a first channel where I begin to create from a history and an anthropology of my own with the objective of understanding our past and our present. Through my work, I have connected with my interest in stelae, codices, glyphs and ceramics; sacred elements where transcendental advances of the Mayan culture are registered, such as: astronomy, the Mayan calendar, predictions and textile art. They also record the discovery of zero in mathematics, a surprising intellectual achievement, as the beginning after nothingness and the end that encloses everything. This calculation is based on the number 20 that takes into account the fingers and toes.

In epistemological terms the word "art" does not exist in any Mayan language. In the Tz’utijil language the closest word to ART is x'ajaan which means "sacred". I set out to take ceremonial elements such as candles, incense, ceremonial stones, flowers, ceremonial drinks and textiles, to create art objects. I am interested in sharing the hidden to the visible, the private to the public, with meanings loaded with deep energetic presence that mark time, using textile elements joined with knots on geometric canvases to make reference to Mayan shamanistic and energetic practices in which energy blockages are usually symbolized through knots.

I use in my palette the four colors of corn: yellow, white, red and black. Corn is the sacred element that represents the beginning of our history. Red, black and white also represent the multiethnic and multilingual Guatemala."

— Antonio Pichillá, 2023