Fernando Palma Rodríguez was born in the rural area of Milpa Alta, Mexico City and his practice is intimately related to this place. After living in the United Kingdom for three decades, Palma Rodríguez returned to Mexico ten years ago and establish himself back in Milpa Alta where he develops his artistic practice as well as the project Calpulli Tecalco, with his mother Carmen Rodríguez Meza, and sister, María Angélica Palma Rodríguez. Calpulli Tecalco is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of the ecological wealth of the area through the milpa—an ancient native agricultural system—as well as the teaching of Nahuatl. Palma Rodríguez’s practice is influenced by his initial training as a mechanical engineer, but also by his interest in Mesoamerican Indigenous thought, past and present, and by the process of learning Nahuatl, the language of his elder relatives that he only learnt as an adult through tape recordings his uncle sent to London. He articulates his interest in science, robotics, and programming with an artistic practice informed by environmental and cultural activism. His work purposefully adopts rudimentary technologies that yield precarious animated sculptures made out of found waste, stones, earth, and vegetation that bring back to life elements and narratives of Mesoamerican cosmologies, which the artist links to present day situations.