TUCSON, AZ.- The Museum of Contemporary Art-Tucson, MOCA Tucson presents Tlazohuelmanaz (Offering of Love), a solo exhibition comprised of newly commissioned artworks by artist Fernando Palma Rodríguez, on view from November 14, 2025, through March 15, 2026, in the museum’s Great Hall. Tlazohuelmanaz is Palma Rodríguez’s first museum exhibition presented in the context of the Mexico-United States borderlands.

Rooted in his community of Milpa Alta, Mexico, Palma Rodríguez’s practice combines art, nature, and technology to reflect on environmental care, water, climate, and the preservation of Indigenous language and knowledge. Through Tlazohuelmanaz, he brings these ongoing concerns into dialogue with the Sonoran Desert, creating a new body of work inspired by the region’s shared cultural and ecological realities. At MOCA, his “offering of love” arrives at a time of intensified border conflict, and while critical of the nationalist and colonial projects at work, the artist’s focus remains on friendship, connection and creativity—deliberate counterpoints to violence and division.

The exhibition features a suite of new mechatronic sculptures, each composed of everyday materials like aluminum cans, masa, and salt to depict figures emblematic of the Sonoran landscape such as watchful coyotes, a moving border, and the ever-elusive rainfall. Using custom-built systems that combine mechanical, electronic, and computer engineering, the artist brings these sculptures to life. Each kinetic element possesses its own agency, interacting with viewers and with one another to evoke the interdependence of all beings.

Palma Rodríguez also presents new visual narratives in the form of flags and wall paintings incorporating elements from the system of Nahuatl logosyllabic writing. These new works are connected to both the landscapes of the Sonoran Desert and Milpa Alta, deepening the artist’s exploration of language as a living bridge between contemporary storytelling and ancestral memory.

Merging ancient and contemporary technologies, Indigenous knowledge systems, and robotic invention, Palma Rodríguez creates hybrid forms that speak to the complexity of life in the borderlands. Tlazohuelmanaz is a poetic and technological meditation on coexistence—an offering of love to the land and to all who inhabit it.

In tandem with MOCA’s 30th Anniversary Capital Campaign, this exhibition aims to foster contemporary art and learning practices in the Southwest borderlands, Tlazohuelmanaz is an experimental work that secures the preservation of cultural memory and artistic innovation in times when the re-definition of art can create human models required for the development of new cognitive technologies.

Tlazohuelmanaz (Offering of Love) is organized by Laura Copelin with support from Alexis Wilkinson, Curator, and Dominic Valencia, Lead Exhibition, Installation, and Design.

Fernando Palma Rodríguez (b. 1957) combines his training as an artist and mechanical engineer to create robotic sculptures that utilize custom software to perform complex, narrative choreographies. His works respond to issues facing Indigenous communities in Mexico, addressing human and land rights, violence, and urgent environmental crises. Palma Rodríguez lives in the agricultural region of Milpa Alta outside Mexico City, where he co-founded Calpulli Tecalco, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of Nahua language and culture. Central to Palma Rodríguez’s practice is an emphasis on Indigenous ancestral knowledge, both as an integral part of contemporary life and a way of shaping the future.

Fernando Palma Rodríguez lives and works in San Pedro Atocpan, Mexico. Recent exhibitions include: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA (2023); House of Gaga, Mexico City (2023); Biennale di Venezia, Italy (2022); Gwangju Biennale, Korea (2021); Centre Pompidou-Metz, France (2021); Ballroom Marfa, Texas (2019); MoMA, New York (2018); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (2017); FRAC des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, France (2016); Parallel Oaxaca, Mexico (2016); Nottingham Contemporary, England (2015); the Biennial of the Americas, Denver, Colorado (2015); Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City, Mexico (2014); and SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2014).