PENACHO VS PENACHO (2011-2025), a long-term project exploring the Penacho de Moctezuma, known as quetzalapanecáyotl in Nahuatl, and the shifting power dynamics surrounding it. Each edition examines aspects of restitution, imagining the artifact alongside its beyond-human stakeholders.

Launched in 2011, PENACHO VS PENACHO began with a wrestling match in Mexico City between Crazy Boy and Superdevolución Copilli Quetzalli over the Penacho. Crazy Boy won the Penacho, but Superdevolución Copilli Quetzalli vowed revenge. It coincided with debates on cultural restitution arising in the context of a restoration and research project between Austria’s Weltmuseum and Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (2010-12). For more, see PENACHO VS PENACHO: THE TRANSCULTURAL LEGACY

A decade later, in 2021, a large-format poster in Vienna, set in 2078, commemorated two centuries since the “discovery” of the quetzalapanecáyotl in Innsbruck. It celebrated an imagined future where a group of wrestlers swapped the “original” with its replica while saving the birds that provided its feathers from extinction: the continga, quetzal, roseate spoonbill, and squirrel cuckoo. For more, see PENACHO VS PENACHO: In the Year 2078

At the beginning of 2025, a performance responded to a claim made by the Weltmuseum’s former director, Sabine Haag, that the “Penacho de Moctezuma is part of the DNA of Austrians” (1). It used the roseate spoonbill’s genetic sequence to challenge Haag’s argument, blending movements (performed by Alberto Montes Zárate) of a gigantic Penacho (constructed by José Arnaud) and songs of the birds whose feathers form the quetzalapanecáyotl (composed by Andrés Guadarrama). For more, see PENACHO VS PENACHO: Verde esmeralda respandeciente

In autumn 2025, the last edition will present evaluations of the Welmuseum’s souvernis featuring quetzalapanecáyotl, aimed at constructing an imaginary and a politics no longer centered on the human, but instead offering a gift to the planet.

(1) Constanza Lambertucci, “‘El penacho de Moctezuma también es parte del ADN de los austriacos,’” El País, October 21, 2020, https://elpais.com/mexico/2020-10-21/sabine-haag-el-penacho-tambien-es-parte-del-patrimonio-cultural-de-los-austriacos.html.