Project1521

Project 1521 is a cadre of poets, scholars, and an artist generating literary and visual works as acts of resistance. "You Will Not Be Forgotten" is the first volume of poetry created by the members of this group. This campaign will directly fund the production, publication and marketing of three volumes of poetry and narratives. The three volumes will be published by Los Angeles-based independent Hinchas de Poesia Press. 

The collaboration began between artist Sandy Rodriguez and writer Adolfo Guzman-Lopez and was inspired by Indigenous perspectives on the Spanish invasion and the 500 years since the fall of the Aztec Empire in 1521. 

Current Members: 

- Gloria Enedina Alvarez, a Chicana poet/intermedia artist, playwright, literary translator and curator. 

- Yago Cura ,  Adult Services Librarian @ Hyde Park for the City of LA Public Library

- Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, long-time NPR-affiliate journalist and founder of The Taco Shop Poets

- Arminé Ikandossian, author of two volumes of poetry, and Los Angeles Writing Project Fellow

- Diana Magaloni, LA County Museum of Art Deputy Director and Curator of the Art of the Ancient Americas.

- Darren J de Leon , founder of San Francisco’s Los Delicados and former host and producer of KPFA’s Radio 2050 in Berkeley, CA. 

- Linda Ravenswood de Montaño, poet and performance artist, founder of The Los Angeles Press.

- Sandy Rodriguez, Los Angeles based artist and researcher

Since 2018, Project 1521 has come together quarterly for writers workshops in Sandy Rodriguez’s Mar Vista studio facilitated by various members of the group, immersed in the artists studio with works in progress. 

The group has performed works at the Pasadena LitFest, Beyond Baroque in 2019 and the exhibition titled You Will Not Be Forgotten at the Charlie James Gallery.  Amid the pandemic the group has shared the work with the support of the Fowler Museum and Getty Research Institute .

Rodriguez’s The Codex Rodríguez–Mondragón is a collection of maps and specimen paintings about the intersections of history, social memory, contemporary politics, and cultural production. It incorporates hand-processed colorants and mineral pigments onto the sacred, ceremonial – and once outlawed – amate paper, reclaiming and reaffirming the Indigenous artistic traditions of the Americas.Rodriguez’ investigation into Indigenous color use in the Americas led her to research the Florentine Codex and the history of image- and color-making in colonial Mexico, which informs this series.
This year,  her new work and the Codex Rodriguez Mondragon  will be exhibited at  LACMA, Los Angeles, The Huntington, Pasadena ; Amon Carter Museum, TX;  Denver Art Museum, CO, and in NYC at El Museo and Another Space, Chelsea, NYC. 

This campaign will conclude in the summer of 2021 when the volumes are expected to be printed and ready for distribution.