June 28 | Make Your Mark: Artist Workshop with Z’otz* Collective
Saturday, June 28, 2025
2 PM
Free | Registration required
About the Program
Take part in this playful collaborative drawing workshop with exhibiting artist, the Z’otz* Collective!
Using pencil crayons, markers, and collage materials, participants will create whimsical creatures and scenes through fast-paced, imaginative exercises. As drawings are passed around the table, each person adds arms, legs, silly faces, and unexpected twists. Then together, you’ll invent delightfully quirky titles.
Open to all ages and skill levels.
About the Exhibition
This summer, the Varley Art Gallery presents the Z’otz* Collective, a multidisciplinary trio composed of Nahúm Flores, Erik Jerezano, and Ilyana Martínez.
Of Latin American heritage, they merge drawing, painting, ceramics, and animation to create playful, storytelling-driven works that blend tradition with contemporary experimentation. Their art features bold lines, surreal imagery, and hybrid creatures inspired by mythologies, fables, and Pre-Hispanic art forms. Since 2004, the Collective has developed a unique communal process, passing works between members to build layered, evolving compositions.
Between the Current and the Echo foregrounds the Z’otz* Collective’s commitment to co-creation, rejecting the notion of the solitary artist in favour of a collaborative, ever-evolving process rooted in spontaneity and exchange.
About the Z’otz* Collective
Since 2004, Nahum Flores, Erik Jerezano, and Ilyana Martinez have gathered religiously on Sundays to adopt a singular artistic persona called Z’otz*. Through what is seemingly improvisational, they weave complex tales about transition, displacement, containment and evolution. Each work is a collaboration of all three artists. One artist starts a piece, circulates it like a baton, and each artist carries the narrative forward guided by the suggestion of the others. At first glance, the finished product, which may include collage, ink, acrylic, crayon, watercolour, gouache and/or pencil, may appear to be a naïve rendition of a dream. Humorous titles serve as a guide on surreal journeys. Do not expect to be satisfied with your first interpretation, let your imagination wander. Z’otz* has done over 25 solo exhibitions in public museums across Canada, mostly in the form of installations, murals and other public projects.
