If you’ve ever had a child stare you down, you know the unnerving feeling that somewhere in their mind, somehow, they know more than they should. Now imagine you’re in a room surrounded by them, and try not to feel the need to explain yourself.

Cesar Pita’s ceramic sculptures feel like Mesoamerican artifacts. And when you get close, you discover that his child subjects are sometimes giving you an absolutely devastating look. Setting those moments aside, you could imagine many of Pita’s pieces in a museum. Instead, they’re currently at Elephant Gallery in Pita’s first solo gallery show, Raíces en Arcilla (Roots in Clay). 

The child of Mexican immigrants, Pita is a former art assistant for Elephant Gallery who currently works as an art handler and Buchanan Arts teacher. The show’s title is a nod to the artist’s familial connection with his chosen medium: His paternal grandfather, whom Pita never met, was an adobe brickmaker in the small town of Zapotiltic, in the Mexican state of Jalisco.

But Pita’s work, made in a mix of wheel-thrown and pre-Columbian techniques, goes back much further than a few generations. His baby figures recall the squishy-looking “baby-face” sculptures of the Olmec period, around 1,000 to 500 BCE — a civilization best known for its sophisticated ceramics and colossal stone heads. He incorporates early-16th-century Aztec motifs like the sun stone — arguably the most famous Mexican artifact — and uses Mexican blanket patterns liberally, with all the brilliant colors of the striped serape. There’s even an entire wall of Olmec-style tecomate bowls, enveloped in muted earth-tone serape stripes, with interiors exploding with color. Each one is completely different — filled with green or pink speckles, or even all the colors of a dark universe. (My biggest wish for this show is for Pita to take these bowls down off the walls so I could see more of those interiors.)

Standing before Pita’s young subjects, you might almost feel like you’ve invaded their space — and that would be the point, as his work is exploring the outsized responsibility borne by first-generation Latinx kids. These kids are navigating the world while sometimes assisting their parents in their own survival, as well as doing the immense labor of preserving and carrying forward a cultural identity — and at the same time being told that they don’t have the right to be here, or that they’re part of some massive crime issue. For these kids to reclaim their own space with a show of bristling pride is tremendously powerful. They are entitled not just to exist but to be upset, and they have claimed their rights to both.

But even with this edge, Pita’s show feels decidedly cozy, thanks to all the blankets but also due to the presence of two guardians: a boy and a dog. They’re both pretty big — several feet tall — and they both jut their chins toward the sky. The boy has a serape blanket in greens, reds, golds and black draped over his shoulders like a cape. He’s holding his arms akimbo, his hands framing a bronze-looking Aztec belt buckle. 

Next to him is a black Xoloitzcuintle, the iconic hairless Mexican dog, covered with nearly 1,000 clay feathers and wearing Aztec symbols of protection in collars around its neck and ankles. Perhaps the fantastical dog is the boy’s familiar; perhaps they’re defenders of the universe. On the wall directly behind them are three sleeping babies on beds of flowers, eyes closed, faces peaceful.

The individual feathers that adorn the body of Pita’s Xolo are the most stunning technique used in the show. This sprigging style was introduced to Pita by his mentor, Mexican American sculptor George Rodriguez, who led a workshop at Buchanan Arts this summer. Along with the Xolo’s feathers, the textured sprigs are included on two vessels — one covered in more feathers, the other in serpent scales — that are intended to represent the Aztec gods Xolotl and Quetzalcoatl, respectively. The interior of the vessels are slick rainbows, as if Pita constructed the deities’ whole bodies and then removed their heads to reveal their insides.

Pita’s exhibition has major mythic energy. He’s not going so far as to imagine a future, but his present certainly recalls a vast legacy that is deeply entwined with — but never weighed down by — the history of ceramics. It’s light and joyful, a notable counterbalance to the immense responsibility carried by his ceramic kids. While some of Pita’s pieces have attitude, they just as often feel completely innocent. His young superheroes are defenders of their own peace — belt buckles flashing, brows furrowed, blankets tucked tight under their chins, cozy and protected by their own power.