The Jungle Remembers: Six Artists Unite to Turn Art into Action in Calakmul

“In Lak’ech Ala K’in – I am you, and you are me.”

In the far south of Mexico, deep within the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, something extraordinary unfolded in Spring 2025. A collective of six visionary artists immersed themselves in one of the world’s most biodiverse and culturally sacred jungles. Hosted by Maya Spirits in partnership with AOTM (Art of this Millinium), this retreat gave birth to a benefit art collection unlike any other: one that doesn’t just depict change, but catalyzes it.

Over two weeks, the artists shared stories and ceremonies with Mayan elders, painted with children from local communities, and bore witness to both the resplendent beauty and harsh struggles that define the Calakmul region. Out of this experience came six deeply personal artworks, each a response to what the jungle revealed—from ecological interdependence and ancestral memory to grief, resilience, and rebirth.

These works now form the AOTM x Maya Spirits Spring 2025 Benefit Collection, hosted both online and at the renowned SFER IK Gallery in Tulum. Their purpose is profound: to raise $50,000 to support a family in crisis and protect over 100 hectares of threatened rainforest. This is an art drop with purpose. A release that resonates. A story that invites all of us to act.

A Journey into the Heart of Calakmul

The Maya Spirits Art Retreat wasn’t just an artist residency—it was a spiritual and ecological initiation. The group ventured through sacred sites and ruins, learned from local shamans and mothers, and encountered both the fragile beauty of the jungle and the socioeconomic challenges endured by its people.

The retreat emphasized Maya wisdom, particularly the phrase, “In Lak’ech Ala K’in” — a guiding principle of interconnectedness and reciprocity. Here, art wasn’t created in isolation but through participation, vulnerability, and service. Each artist returned home altered, carrying the weight of new understanding. What followed were six works that offer not only aesthetic experience but a visceral call to collective care.

The Artworks: Six Visions, One Purpose

1. Hermanas Alquimistas – Summer Wagner

At first glance, Hermanas Alquimistas feels almost staged in its perfection—but that illusion is quickly replaced by something much deeper: intimacy, truth, and metaphysical charge. Two sisters, Mayerli and Emily, sit cradled by wild foliage in the jungle night. They are illuminated not by a divine light, but by something more tender: LED bulbs given to them by the artist.

Wagner frames the sisters in a visual language evocative of Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro and the sacred feminine seen in early religious painting. But instead of recreating religious archetypes, she transcends them. The older sister, Mayerli, holds her hand to her heart, a quiet gesture that becomes both literal and symbolic illumination. The jungle becomes a womb. The scene, an alchemical ritual. It echoes the Maya concept of sacred dualities: youth and wisdom, vulnerability and strength.

Learning after the fact that the sisters are the very children who lost their father gives the piece not just emotional resonance but ethical clarity. This isn’t metaphorical transformation; it is literal transmutation. A moment of shared creation has become a vehicle for material change. Few works so gently capture the spirit of mutual respect and healing as this one.

2. NEOCODEX – Fahad Karim

If Wagner’s work draws on the deeply human, Fahad Karim’s NEOCODEX situates us in the systemic and the mythic. Inspired by the Maya codices—the rare, pre-Hispanic folding books that encode cosmology and history—Karim imagines a contemporary scroll that evolves endlessly through generative code.

Each minute, the artwork flips to a new page, introducing a dynamic tension between preservation and transformation. The glyph-like forms reference Maya logograms but are abstracted into a recursive, machine-born language. At once meditative and analytical, NEOCODEX oscillates between the ceremonial and the computational.

The dualities at its base—linear/cyclical, disruption/evolution, individual/community—frame the work as a visual thesis. It critiques the linear march of modernity while embracing the cyclical logics that governed Mayan epistemology. This is not just a digital homage; it is a techno-cosmological reckoning, where heritage becomes algorithm.

3. The Light of Those Who Came Before – Samantha Cavet

Cavet’s piece is drenched in aura. Emerging from a literal and symbolic return to Latin America, this work captures a ruin at Río Bec illuminated by a golden portal. A solitary figure crosses the threshold. It’s an image of longing and reconstitution. The painterly atmosphere recalls Romantic landscape painting, yet its emotional core is firmly rooted in Latin American diaspora and spiritual reconnection.

The piece is loaded with layered iconography: lunar symbolism, balam guardians, child-made glyphs, and the sacred number three. This is not ornamental symbolism, but a recalibration of Maya cosmology as a mode of personal transformation. Like an immersive theater set, the environment pulls you in, asking not just to be seen but entered.

The ruin is no longer a static relic; it is a character, a teacher, and a portal. In Cavet’s hands, history does not end in decay—it becomes a guide toward rebirth.

4. The Poet – Dave Krugman

Photography, often considered documentary, becomes metaphysical in The Poet. Krugman sets his camera on a long exposure, expecting the moonlit shoreline to reveal texture and atmosphere. What he does not expect is the appearance of a still, unknown figure—a man who remained motionless long enough to be captured, yet invisible in real time.

The accidental mysticism of the moment elevates this image into something near sacred. The figure, seated at the edge of land and sea, evokes ancient Maya astronomers or the solitary sages of East Asian ink painting. This unanticipated witness, frozen in moonlight, becomes a stand-in for all those who remain unseen in history.

Krugman’s reverence for natural light, elemental beauty, and temporal mystery aligns with both Romanticism and Indigenous worldviews. Here, photography isn’t about control—it’s about receiving what the world offers.

5. El Chico Solo – Defaced

In El Chico Solo, Defaced departs from solemnity and embraces the raucous joy of myth-making. Rendered in hyper-saturated, cartoon-inflected style, the work mashes up ceiba trees, jaguar gods, street tacos, and chaotic parades of figures. It resembles a Mayan Pop Codex—as if the Dresden Codex were hijacked by Studio Ghibli and run through a zine press.

But within the humor lies deep critique. Defaced is not mocking tradition; he is reanimating it. The central ceiba tree, sacred in Maya cosmology, roots the chaos with gravity. Around it spin hybrid gods, contemporary children, techno-beasts, and ritual fragments. It’s a living, breathing glyph of modern Mesoamerican identity—complex, contradictory, celebratory.

There is genius in its density. Like an Orozco mural colliding with meme culture, El Chico Solo reminds us that preservation doesn’t require solemnity. It requires engagement, play, and reimagination.

6. Calakmul: City of Two Pyramids – Ben Skaar

The final image in the collection is perhaps the most literal, and yet it holds the grandest scope. Skaar captures the temple at Calakmul from above, bathed in morning light and half-consumed by jungle. It is a portrait of time and scale, a confrontation with both the endurance and erosion of civilization.

There is something almost planetary about this image. The jungle stretches endlessly, mist rising like breath. The pyramid—once a statement of human power—is now partially reclaimed by the Earth. This is not decline, but rebalancing. Nature, long patient, retakes its rhythms.

In the Maya worldview, pyramids were cosmic intersections. Skaar captures this beautifully: not through spectacle, but through serenity. It is the perfect closing note—a reminder that what we build may pass, but what we protect endures.

Beyond Aesthetic: The Mission Behind the Collection

This collection isn’t just art inspired by nature. It’s art that gives back. All six works were donated by the artists to fund a very specific mission:

• Support a single mother and her daughters in Calakmul by helping her launch a nail salon and return her children to school.
• Protect over 100 hectares of rainforest from deforestation.
• Raise awareness globally of the urgent social and ecological challenges facing the Yucatán.

This effort is backed by Maya Spirits Foundation, an award-winning nonprofit co-founded by Dr. Lorenzo Martinez, known for bridging indigenous knowledge with sustainable innovation. With over 47 patents in environmental protection and a record of preserving 1,000+ hectares to date, Maya Spirits ensures that 100% of proceeds go directly to the land and the people.

The artworks will also be featured at SFER IK Tulum and NFC Lisbon, accompanied by a mini-documentary that captures the full story behind the retreat—from ceremony to creation.

A New Model for Impact-Driven Art

This benefit drop is part of a larger movement redefining what art can be in the age of planetary crisis. It proposes a new model of contribution, where blockchain, creativity, and ancestral knowledge intersect to generate real-world results.

By collecting a work from this series, patrons are not only acquiring a piece of profound artistic reflection—they are becoming co-authors of a community’s next chapter.

This isn’t philanthropy. It’s participation.

This isn’t about charity. It’s about shared futures.

How to Get Involved

• Explore the Collection: View all six works and artist statements on AOTM and Maya Spirits websites.
• Collect an Artwork: 100% of proceeds fund the family and conservation efforts.
• Share the Story: Use your voice to elevate this initiative. Every post, article, or mention widens the circle of care.

Art can do more than reflect the world. It can rebuild it.

The jungle remembers. Let us, too, become keepers of memory, makers of meaning, and agents of regeneration.

[Explore the Benefit Collection Here]

[Learn More About Maya Spirits]