GUARDIANS took physical form in 2021, when two of its colossi were presented at Rockefeller Center in New York. Since then, these mythical beings have traversed geographies and symbols, evolving without losing their root: the defense of natural balance, the memory of the earth, and the ancestral pulse of indigenous peoples.

This new installment does not seek to repeat the monumentality, but to condense its strength into a more personal format. Each sculpture has been carved from copal wood and crafted with precision. Through painting, flashes of gold leaf, and shades that evoke the diversity of Oaxacan landscapes, these bodies reveal the energy contained in the material. In their most intimate scale, the Guardians remain titans.

They now emerge as hybrid creatures that embody the transition between the elements: water and earth, air and soil. It is not always their forms that reveal this dual belonging, but the symbols that traverse them —gills, textures, feathers, or claws— as signs of a life that does not obey binarism, but rather the constant movement of the living. They are bodies that narrate disputed territories, ecosystems in transition, landscapes that feel and respond.

These Guardians are part of the expanded universe of NOMADS, a vision born from the comic created by Ricardo Ángeles, in which science and the Zapotec worldview intertwine in a future where humanity has transformed its body to adapt to a planet in crisis.

The Tonas, the Nahuales, the Warriors, and the Guardians are living entities within that narrative; the Tonas and Nahuales are guides, the warriors are fighters and defenders. The guardians observe from the margins of the territory, awakening and coming to life when the balance is interrupted.

This collection is a call to listen to the deep murmur of the elements.