Assembly | 10 Years of 'The Road To Tepeyac': Alinka Echeverría

Since its very first exhibition in 2011, the work has traveled around the world from Korea to South Africa to Canada, in nearly thirty solo exhibitions and many group shows. To mark this milestone of a decade, for the next month Echeverría has committed her artist commission from all artwork sales from the series to be donated entirely to Fondo Semillas, a women-led Mexican non-profit organization focused on improving women’s lives in Mexico. Assembly is proud to support Echeverría and Fondo Semillas in this important effort.

“As I reflected on the ten years that The Road To Tepeyac has been traveling, it felt right to bring a part of its essence home and give back locally in a very direct way," says Echeverría about this commitment. "Women are the beating heart and bedrock of Mexico. Fondo Semillas’ diverse projects help mitigate the hardships that many face and helps them navigate a clear path for themselves and future generations. I trust the team’s transparency and admire their tireless work based on ongoing research, participatory projects, and regenerative practices.”

The Road to Tepeyac consists of a series of photographs of devout Mexican pilgrims carrying their personal image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the anniversary of her apparition in 1531. The work provides a kaleidoscopic experience of multiple representations of the sacred image and deconstructs the historical, political, philosophical, psychological, and anthropological relationship between an invisible presence and its materialized expression.

Alinka Echeverría is a Mexican-British artist working in multiple media and emerging technologies. She holds a Master’s degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Edinburgh (2004) and a postgraduate degree in Photography from the International Center for Photography (2008). Her research-based work brings a feminist and counter-colonial approach to questions of visual representation. For the past ten years, her work has been widely exhibited, including solo exhibitions at Light Work, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, The Preus Museum, Norway’s National Museum of Photography, the Johannesburg Art Gallery, Les Rencontres de la Photographie Arles, and The California Museum of Photography at UCR. Awards include the MAST Foundation Prize (2020), Prix Elysée finalist(2017), FOAM Talent (2015), BMW's Art & Culture Residency (2015), Lucie Award’s International Photographer of the Year (2012), and HSBC Prize for Photography (2011). Her work is part of several public and institutional collections including The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Musée Nicéphore Niépce, BMW Art & Culture, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Commissions include the Swiss Foundation for Photography and BBC Four, for whom she presented a three part series: The Art That Made Mexico.