Until 2018, the Precolumbian Zapotec city of Mitla had never been reconstructed in 3D, and was rarely depicted in colors. French digital artist Ludovic Celle dedicated a full year of investigation and 3D modeling to transform our visual perception of ancient Mitla, releasing a realistic and carefully detailed digital model of this iconic Zapotec site. This talk explores the story of this illustrative project, linking archaeological data and the

role of intuition and imagination to fill in the blanks for an immersive exploration of a very special landmark of ancient Oaxaca.

Speaker Bio:

Ludovic Celle, born in 1981, is a former architect from France, graduated from Grenoble. He has been living in Mexico since 2014, settling in Oaxaca de Juarez in 2017, as independent illustrator and researcher in ancient art and architecture, with a focus on Mesoamerica, especially the Zapotec. In 2018, he released a digital 3-D reconstruction of the full Precolumbian city of Mitla, as well as other 3-D models of Precolumbian architectures. He is also co-founder of ARX Project A.C., the Mexican association which crafted, funded, and coordinated the Lyobaa Project at Mitla. The ARX Project is an approved beneficiary of the Oaxaca Lending Library Foundation, Inc.