Tuesday, February 8, CDMX. Believe it or not, in this atrocious and at times beautiful city the jacarandas have already begun to bloom. Last Saturday I saw the first ones in the Sculpture Space, but I already had news about them on the networks. We all love the annual surprise of its color, like the opening of an urgent spring, and I have a good record of its flowering because with it also come my allergic attacks. Every year I have to live for a couple of weeks with some sudden sneezes and then it passes, nothing comparable to what I suffered as a teenager, when my afternoons were spent with a basketball in one hand and a handkerchief in the other. I remember very well that then the sneezing began at the beginning of March – with the jacarandas – and I have noticed how over the years that date is anticipated little by little; Ten years ago they already bloomed in mid-February and now they began to open at the end of January. It is already a fact that, due to climate change, the pollen season starts earlier, up to 20 days in the last 30 years, lasts longer and is more intense, thanks to the increase in carbon dioxide levels, my allergy has confirmed it (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/allergy). This year I spent a couple of days immersed in a sea of clear snot, with a completely congested head, and on Twitter I found hundreds of messages complaining bitterly that allergies had arrived. Not only did I confirm that I am not alone, but also that we are all in the same battered boat.
On Sunday a painting exhibition opened and I went, very well prepared; The previous Thursday I went to another one, on Wednesday too and the same thing last Saturday. I confess my propensity for these events, but it has been a long time – since those remote times of the last millennium when I worked for Fonca – that they were not so frequent; I must also declare that I do not always manage to overcome the shyness that characterizes me, to finally reunite with my peers. On Saturday, January 28, he inaugurated Malezas by Octavio Moctezuma, in the gallery of the Librería del Fondo Rosario Castellanos, with a splendid selection of his most recent work in oil and tempera on canvas, populated with vegetal textures that move from the figurative to the abstract. Subtly. On Wednesday, February 1, the Bachelor’s Degree in Photography at the Higher School of Cinema was presented, with the photographic exhibition Imaginar la imagen that includes pieces by Maya Goded, Silvia Gruner, Nicola Lorusso, Fernando Montiel Klimt and Andrea Martínez, among others; poster. On Thursday, February 2, to celebrate La Candelaria, the exhibition Wet Depressions opened, with the wonderful and subtle erotic watercolors of Annie Flores, in the lobby of the Julián Carrillo room of Radio UNAM. Finally, last Sunday Circe inaugurated her plastic exhibition, showing part of her work in silkscreen and acrylic, made from her studies at the National School of Art in Havana. I want to think that these exhibitions sprout like jacarandas, suddenly and everywhere, with the natural certainty that more are coming. Of course, an exhibition is never independent of the artistic value of the work it shows (don’t scold me, doctor), but the simple act of bringing together a group of happy friends to see paintings or photographs, sharing them live, commenting on them and enjoying them me. It turned out wonderful, like decades ago.
