‘‘ The artist also takes an interest in amantecas, the elite Aztec artists who mastered featherwork— the art of feathers, which, at the time, were as precious as they were sacred, and used to adorn sovereigns’ headdresses, warriors’ shields and certain religious objects. Monks in Mexico still use featherwork to make Christian icons. And, in the hands of Omar Castillo Alfaro, featherwork is used to recreate the manga characters he saw on television in the 1990s, and to question the status of images in the age of Internet circulation.’’

Pedro, a parrot from the state of Tampico (Northeast Mexico), grew up with my family. Pedro is my home. Pedro is the starting point of my research. Before the ‘colonization’ of America, there were schools of feather workers. For Mesoamerican cultures, the use of birds was a reference to Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent (god of Aztec mythology). This god was the protector of the art of feathering. Feathers had ritual, funerary, festive and warlike uses; it was an art of extreme skill. 
Once the Spaniards arrived, they asked the ‘natives’ to create miniature religious images with this technique. These objects that captivated Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries have now practically disappeared.