A friend sent over this image of a hand-cut stencil representing Coatlicue, posted in the Brighton Park neighborhood of Chicago around December 12. The artist says:
I spray painted through the stencil on paper, then pasted it up late at night, its still there, haven't talked to people about it, have noticed guys checking it out though, my roommate took a photo of it while waiting for the bus and talked to a local who said he liked it, and it would make a nice tattoo.
The Coatlicue statue, now on view at the National Museum of Anthropology, is one of the most terrifying and mysterious Aztec structures unearthed in Mexico City during the Colonial period. From a piece for Nero Magazine, by the artist Tania Perez Cordova:
After some research, the university scholars realized that the sculpture was the Coatlicue goddess. The viceroy of the time, Viceroy Revillagigedo, had the sculpture placed at the Catholic University as a monument to ancient times. After a short while, the scholars realized that some locals where secretly worshiping the sculpture and thus decided that having it in public view could revive old Aztec beliefs among indigenous people. In order to protect the catholic Spanish colony, they chose to bury the monolith once again, this time under the university’s patio. However, before it was dug in, the scholar Antonio de Leon y Gama had time to make a detailed description of it.
Read more here.
* See also, "The anthropology museum, reconsidered."