Leslie Tillett’s Tapestry of the Conquest of Mexico

We worked with CU Denver’s Associate Professor Brian Leister’s students to design a bilingual app experience that empowers visitors to learn more about the scenes portraying Malinche and her role in Cortes’ campaign. Users can also play a close-looking game that challenges visitors to distinguish from the threaded Indigenous peoples, vessels, and objects from Western ones. Download the La Malinche app now to experience this incredible artwork and come see a part of it in person in the Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche exhibition, on view through May 8, 2022.

Tillet Tapiz

The Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1521 irrevocably changed the political and social landscape of the Americas and the balance of global power for the next three centuries. Hernan Cortes set forth from Havana, Cuba, in February 1519 and landed on Mexico’s gulf shores in March. The scope and impact of the historical moment compelled both native and Spanish chroniclers to recount the events of the campaign in detail leaving behind a rich a varied historical record.

The Tillett tapiz, an embroidered cotton cloth created by British-born American textile designer Leslie Tillett, depicts the two-year Spanish campaign to bring down the Aztec empire and conquer Mexico.

Tillett conducted extensive research combing through both native and Spanish accounts of the conquest for inspiration; the singular work underscores Tillett’s depth of research as well as his sensitivity to the subject. After its completion, the tapiz toured the United States making stops at Santa Fe’s Palace of the Governors and the Cooper Hewitt Museum, but ultimately returning to the family where it lived until this past year.