In this image, one of my best friends appears, naked, with a snake winding its way around her body. The scene is blurred, out of focus. It is sensed more than seen, as if it refuses to fully offer itself to the gaze or is trying to hide, which serves as a metaphor for two figures historically demonised and censored: the naked female body and the snake. The woman and the snake have been central figures in the history of my country. From Aztec myths to the imposed Catholic morality, both have oscillated between the divine and the forbidden. “Coatlicue”, the mother goddess, with a skirt of snakes and a body that gives both life and death. Eve, the woman who falls for speaking to a snake. In our collective imagination, both embody a power that has been feared, repressed, and distorted. This image sits right in the middle of those two forces: the ancestral and the colonial, the visible and the hidden. The female body — one that in Mexico is still watched, judged, and violated — appears here without shame, accompanied by a snake that does not attack, but instead, accompanies.
