Ricardo Matzuwa Ayón Flores

Ricardo Matzuwa Ayón Flores ¦ Original Sound, Co-production for "Zitakua" ¦ Born in 1961 in Mexico City; lives and works in Tepic, Mexico

Ricardo Ayón was honored by a high-ranking Wixárika shaman with the indigenous artist name “Matzuwa.” He holds a FONCA diploma in fine arts and has been active as a visual artist (painting, drawing, etching, murals) for 40 years. Approximately 80 group exhibitions and approximately 25 solo exhibitions, including the Festival Internacional Cervantino in Guanajuato, the Riviera Cultural Center in Ensenada, Baja California, the Oscar Román Gallery in Mexico City, Gallery One in Puerto Vallarta, Nectar Negro in Tepic, the Mary L. Fifield Art Gallery in Boston, the Centro Cívico Cultural Dominicano in New York, the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City, the Instituto Cultural de Aguascalientes, and the Chapelle des Bénédictines in Saint Jean d’Angély. His most recent murals include the works “Tamatsí Kayumari” and “SU’UMUAVIKA,” both of which can be seen as public art in Querétaro, Mexico.

Ayón teaches art, creative practice, and mural painting in schools and works as an assistant director, producer, and production assistant. In the Zitakua neighborhood of Tepic, he has been teaching art classes and leading painting workshops for Wixárika children and youth for years.

Ayón is a member of the NGO “L’Art d’être Huichol” and served on the jury for the PECDA Cultural Promotion Fund in Nayarit. In 2019, he received the “Destacados 2019” award in Rosario, Argentina, and the prize at the 2019 Amado Nervo Festival in Tepic, Mexico. He is currently preparing his next solo exhibition.

He served as an artistic and research collaborator on the films “La sombra de un dios,” about the massacre of the Wixárika community of La Mora (Viennale 2017), “The Birthmark,” about the femicide of 23-year-old Victoria Pamela Salas in Mexico City (Saarbrücken 2020), and “Those Next to Us” (Telluride 2023), about the migrant Germán López Rosales’s journey from Ixtlán del Río, Mexico, to San Antonio, Texas, during which several people died.