1563
Category
Cellular concrete, SculptureAbout This Project
Axis Mundi – 1563 – Christian Abusaid – MIAMI
In December of 1563, the village of Ubaque became the epicenter of the last great recorded Muisca ceremony—a vast convergence of communities from Bacatá, Guatavita, Suba, Chía, Sugamuxi, Suesca, Fusagasugá, Pasca, and beyond. What colonial chroniclers dismissed as “idolatrous revelry” was, in truth, the final eruption of an ancestral technology of spirit: chicha shared in abundance, chants rising like spirals, dances woven into the night, masks and sacred objects carrying the pulse of a cosmology older than empire.
The Spanish authorities saw resistance in these ceremonies and responded with repression. The cacique of Ubaque and other leaders were arrested, publicly humiliated, and stripped of their ritual objects. After this moment, persecution intensified, and Muisca spiritual life was pushed underground—surviving only in guarded memories, hidden altars, and syncretic transformations.
This work is an homage to the peoples who gathered in Ubaque—a tribute to the endurance, quiet defiance, and living resilience of the Muisca.
It honors a sacred lineage that refused to disappear, continuing to breathe beneath the imposed architectures of conquest.
