Xantil (deity censer), Eastern Nahua, Tehuacan Valley, Mexico, 1200–1521. Ceramic and slip. The Met, Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection.

A xantil is a ceramic brazier built as a body. Copal resin burned inside the hollow figure, and the smoke escaped through holes pierced in the hands, chest, mouth and nostrils – that smoke was how you spoke to the god. This one is Xochipilli, the Flower Prince: one of the Macuiltonaleque, the Five Souls, gods of music, dance, feasting and pleasure – and of everything that comes with excess. I rebuilt it as a nicotine stick. 💨 What interests me is not the substance. It's the ritual and how solitary it's become. 💭

A xantil served a room. A temple, a household, a village – a group of people standing around one object, breathing the same air at the same time, on purpose. Its closest living descendant serves one person, standing outside a door, alone.

That shift is everywhere, and it is accelerating.

Music left the room and moved into headphones. Meals left the table and became single-serve. Cinema left the hall and became a phone held at arm's length.

All of these used to require other people. None of them do now.

The design language followed. Ritual objects were heavy, shared, ceramic, repairable, and made to sit in the middle of a group. Personal objects are light, sealed, translucent plastic, disposable, and made to disappear into one hand. FIFTH SOUL is deliberately the second kind: it looks priced, not carved.

Rather than just wrapping a vape in pre-Columbian pattern, I adapted the actual mechanics. The crest on Xochipilli's head becomes the drip tip – you draw through the headdress. The mouth still vents: when it hits temp, vapour leaks from the lips. A xantil gave that signal to an entire room; here it's a status light for one person.

Original: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/309861 Canvas: https://lnkd.in/diFRmU_n LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/anastasiia-tverdostup-6625a3345_floramuseum-activity-7502280024746680320-hdbU?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAFZoDeoBrPintrdeTDOOdVrPda0DYOcUPYY Inst: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dc8EVx7o-Sh/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&stkn=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==