Fernando Palma Rodríguez:
Tlazohuelmanaz (offering of love)
November 14, 2025 – March 15, 2026
Great Hall
Tlazohuelmanaz (Offering of Love) is a solo exhibition comprised of newly commissioned artworks by artist Fernando Palma Rodríguez, the artist’s first museum exhibition presented in the context of the Mexico-United States borderlands. Rooted in his community of Milpa Alta, Mexico, Palma Rodríguez’s practice combines art, nature, and technology to reflect on environmental care, water, climate, and the preservation of Indigenous language and knowledge.
Through Tlazohuelmanaz, he brings these ongoing concerns into dialogue with the Sonoran Desert, creating a new body of work inspired by the region’s shared cultural and ecological realities. At MOCA, his “offering of love” arrives at a time of intensified border conflict, and while critical of the nationalist and colonial projects at work, the artist’s focus remains on friendship, connection and creativity—deliberate counterpoints to violence and division.
The exhibition features a suite of new mechatronic sculptures, each composed of everyday materials like aluminum cans, masa, and salt to depict figures emblematic of the Sonoran landscape such as watchful coyotes, a moving border, and the ever-elusive rainfall. Using custom-built systems that combine mechanical, electronic, and computer engineering, the artist brings these sculptures to life. Each kinetic element possesses its own agency, interacting with viewers and with one another to evoke the interdependence of all beings.
Palma Rodríguez also presents new visual narratives in the form of flags and wall paintings incorporating elements from the system of Nahuatl logosyllabic writing. These new works are connected to both the landscapes of the Sonoran Desert and Milpa Alta, deepening the artist’s exploration of language as a living bridge between contemporary storytelling and ancestral memory.
Merging ancient and contemporary technologies, Indigenous knowledge systems, and robotic invention, Palma Rodríguez creates hybrid forms that speak to the complexity of life in the borderlands. Tlazohuelmanaz is a poetic and technological meditation on coexistence—an offering of love to the land and to all who inhabit it.
This exhibition is organized by Laura Copelin, Deputy Director & Lead Curator with Alexis Wilkinson, Curator. Exhibition design and production by Dominic Valencia, Lead Exhibition Installation and Design.
Generous support for this exhibition is provided by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Ford Foundation; Teiger Foundation; Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Arizona Humanities; Gaga, Mexico City; Arizona Commission on the Arts; Consulado de México en Tucson, and MOCA Tucson’s Board of Trustees, Ambassador Council, and Members.
In-kind support provided by Hotel McCoy; Recyco, Inc.; and Sorta Summer Rowhouse.
About the artist
Fernando Palma Rodríguez (Mexican, b. 1957) combines his training as an artist and mechanical engineer to create robotic sculptures that utilize custom software to perform complex, narrative choreographies. His works respond to issues facing Indigenous communities in Mexico, addressing human and land rights, violence, and urgent environmental crises. Palma Rodríguez lives in the agricultural region of Milpa Alta outside Mexico City, where he co-founded Calpulli Tecalco, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of Nahua language and culture. Central to Palma Rodríguez’s practice is an emphasis on Indigenous ancestral knowledge, both as an integral part of contemporary life and a way of shaping the future.
Fernando Palma Rodríguez lives and works in San Pedro Atocpan, Mexico. Recent exhibitions include: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA (2023); Gaga, Mexico City (2023); Biennale di Venezia, Italy (2022); Gwangju Biennale, Korea (2021); Centre Pompidou-Metz, France (2021); MoMA, New York (2018); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (2017); FRAC des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, France (2016); Parallel Oaxaca, Mexico (2016); Nottingham Contemporary, England (2015); the Biennial of the Americas, Denver, Colorado (2015); Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City, Mexico (2014); and SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2014).
Join artist Fernando Palma Rodríguez for a talk on November 15 from 2:00 – 3:00 pm that will explore the connections between art and Mexican Indigenous knowledge in his work. In a communal effort to revitalize meaning and to represent time and territory, Palma Rodríguez will discuss the logosyllabic written form of Náhuatl, a pre-Hispanic system that combines logograms and syllables. The artist will share reflections on how this system informs his artistic practice and its poetic and political implications.
This bilingual conversation, one hour in length followed by a Q&A session, invites artists, poets, linguists, and anyone interested in Indigenous languages and in the intersections between art and decolonial cultural memory to join.
Image Credit: Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Soldado (Soldier), 2001, House of Gaga; Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Tocihuapapalutzin, 2012, House of Gaga; Fernando Palma Rodríguez
Xi mo matlazacan ce cehce, 2006, House of Gaga; Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Atcopan, 2010. Courtesy of the artist.