Jaguar Portals is a mask-based immersive installation exploring how perception, spatial attention, and collective presence construct experience. Developed from a long practice in experimental cinema and installation, the work uses sculptural masks, projected imagery, and audience movement to create an environment of perceptual negotiation rather than narrative instruction.
Mask-Based Immersive Works (1997–2018)
Since 1997, C. Huilo C. has developed immersive environments and performances centered on hand-built masks, sculptural surfaces, and projected imagery. Early installations established a practice of treating the exhibition space itself as a total perceptual field—integrating walk-through environments, sculptural objects, and live performance into unified experiential systems. From 2007 onward, this methodology expanded through large-scale mask-based installations and performances presented at Fringe Festivals in Los Angeles, Boulder, New York City, and Washington, D.C., as well as sites in Mexico, Greece, and Spain. These works employed over-scale papier-mâché masks, articulated puppetry, and video projected directly onto sculptural forms, often under constrained technical conditions that required live calibration and adaptive spatial design. Across two decades of development, this lineage established the material, optical, and performative foundations that now inform the Jaguar Portals immersive system.
Keeper of the Masques — Immersive Installation (2010-2022)
Keeper of the Masques is a spatial video environment built around a mechanically activated miniature theater, suspended sculptural elements, and projected moving-image fragments. Developed at Teatro Jaguar Luna in Costa Rica, the installation transforms cinematic material into an architectural and perceptual system in which images appear on, within, and around a moving theatrical structure. Rather than presenting a fixed narrative, the work operates as a living cinematic apparatus, inviting viewers to experience film as a spatial field shaped by scale, motion, and attention.
Installation Works (Selected- 1997-2025)
Throughout 1997 to 2025 a series of gallery installations and site-based environments—including Homoeroticism and the Sacred, Culture of Denial, Dream Awakening, and Día de los Muertos—C. Huilo C. developed immersive fields of sculpture, painting, sound, and projected image that transformed exhibition spaces into layered perceptual theaters. These works created walk-through, holographic-style environments in which symbolic imagery, spatial design, and moving image merged into a continuous experiential field. Presented across galleries and later expanded through independent events and festivals, these installations established a visual and architectural language that continues to inform the artist’s evolving immersive systems.
dc fringe blobs videos
day of dead
culture of denial
13 Levels of Consciousness (2007-2012)
13 Levels of Consciousness is a multi-level immersive installation developed through residencies at Can Serrat, Spain (2007), and later presented at the Symbiosis Gathering at Pyramid Lake, Nevada (2012). The work was structured through painted transparent screens, sculptural video, and audience progression across a sequence of discrete environments. Rather than relying on narrative or didactic symbolism, the installation organized experience through designed thresholds and spatial sequencing, guiding visitors through perceptual and cognitive transitions. By emphasizing movement, visual layering, and shifting modes of attention, the project established a framework for immersion based on process and perception rather than representation, forming a key precedent for later mask-based and spatial installations.
symbiosis
can serrat live sculpture
can serrat screens
Teatro Jaguar Luna (Long Term Laboratory 2010-2022 -Costa Rica)
From 2010 to 2022, C. Huilo C. operated Teatro Jaguar Luna in Costa Rica as a long-term laboratory for immersive installation, experimental cinema, and spatial performance. Over this period, more than twenty permanent structures—including octagonal buildings, jungle theaters, kiosks, and performance spaces—were designed and constructed to support sustained research into audience flow, architectural staging, and hybrid film-installation systems. The site functioned as an iterative production environment where construction, filming, rehearsal, and live presentation continuously informed one another. Within this context, foundational material for the feature-length cine-arte project Keeper of the Masques was developed through repeated cycles of installation, filming, and audience engagement across both intimate and large-group settings.
inside octagon theater
inside mariposa building theater
outdoor jaguar theater
