Maya Goded: The Serpent's Trail

A slipcased ecofeminist testimony to the challenges and complexities faced by Mexican women, interwoven with images, spoken accounts, historical archives and philosophical reflections

Published with El Mojado Ediciones.

Mexican photographer and documentary filmmaker Maya Goded (born 1967) explores wounded territories--from the Atacama Desert to the jungles of Chiapas--where the body of the earth and the bodies of women serve as both stage and witness to historical violence, extractivism and oblivion. Fusing photography, poetry, testimony and essay, The Serpent's Trail emerges from a personal quest, as the photographer explores her maternal lineage that is marked by wars, migrations and abuse, drawing parallels with the experiences of Indigenous women, miners, healers and land defenders. The serpent--an ancestral symbol of transformation and feminine wisdom--serves as the guiding motif of this spiraling narrative, embracing cyclicality in contrast to the linear, patriarchal logic of destructive progress. Featuring three interfolding booklets, the volume is a ritual act of memory, mourning and rebirth--an ecofeminist proposal that reimagines the relationship between humanity and nature from the root, from the feminine, from the serpent.