05/01/2026
Birkbeck's Peltz Gallery will be delighted to welcome you for the opening reception on Thursday 22 January, 6-8pm. Book here https://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event/57892/opening-reception-melanie-smith-tixinda-a-snails-purple
Humans’ relationships with the animal, plant, and mineral worlds are more often than not marked by the signs of extraction and extinction. Yet stories of co-existence and collaboration are multiple. Tixinda is the Mixtec word for the sea snail Plicopurpura pansa, the only species of its kind whose ink can be harmlessly milked to produce a purple pigment, known as Tyrian or Royal purple. For centuries, this natural dye has sustained the livelihoods of Indigenous communities in the Pacific Coast of Mexico and Central America, who have themselves fought to protect the sea snail’s ecosystem from excessive tourism and fishery. This multi-media installation by British-Mexican artist Melanie Smith, developed in collaboration with visual artist Patricio Villarreal Ávila, dwells on the sensorial dimensions of a colour at once sacred and embedded in global systems of exchange, circulation, colonial erasure, and survival.
Curated by Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra
Exhibition: 23 January – 11 March 2026
Peltz Gallery
43 Gordon Square
London
WC1H 0PD
Image: Tixinda (2025) by Melanie Smith
