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A letter About Codices

Balmaceda

Via Paolo Giovio, 9, Milano

20-26 April 2026· Other
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Schedule

Upon registration

After its debut at last year’s Milano Design Week, Balmaceda returns to Milan with Códices, the new collection that deepens the brand’s exploration of the relationship between cultural memory and contemporary language, presented through a site-specific installation by Luis Urculo titled A Letter About Codices. The exhibition takes place in a private apartment in the San Vittore area, transforming the space into an intimate, layered journey that guides visitors through the universe of José María Balmaceda. A Letter About Codices is an invitation to visit the home of an archaeologist, a collector, and his shadow; installed within a domestic space where rugs are displayed among a landscape of objects and artifacts. It is the portrait of a character we will never see, yet can imagine through his possessions and interests. The three rooms of the apartment present selected pieces from the new collection, as well as the creative process and inspiration behind these works. Past and present come together to construct a house of ideas. The Códices collection, previously previewed in February during Mexico City Art Week 2026 with two embroideries and three ceramic vases, will be presented in Milan in its entirety, including the series of rugs that complete the project. Designed by José María Balmaceda, the collection interprets the power of ancestral Mexican architecture through a contemporary language, transforming pyramids, reliefs, and ancient codices into rugs, embroideries, and ceramics. Each piece imagines the codices not as archaeological artifacts, but as living organisms that breathe and exist across time. Nopales, snakes marking the cardinal points, cosmic trees, and luminous portals emerge from ancient codices and Mexican mythologies, reactivated in pure lines, ceremonial volumes, and silences that evoke terraces, temples, and sacred mountains. The Chikankari embroidery—reinterpreted according to the brand’s aesthetic—introduces a tactile rhythm that transforms design into ritual, weaving a bridge between Mexico and the millenary precision of artisans who translate every curve into memory. The ceramics function as micro-Mexican architectures: intimate temples and contemporary guardians preserving the memory of the Mesoamerican landscape. Códices does not seek to reconstruct the past: it reactivates it from a deeply Mexican present. It invents a territory where stone becomes thread, earth becomes color, and Mexico’s sacred forms find new ways of existing. Each work opens a threshold—that geometric flash that runs through the entire collection—inviting one to traverse a symbolic geography that reminds us we are layers of memory, land, and history.

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