Adis Soriano suggests the audience life sequences, metaphored by the repetitive geometry which frames the vitalism of the expressionist spaces, and how they are gradually used up to revive in a perpetual way images that are completed with the altar and the skulls that stylise and universalise the Mexican tradition in the celebration of the dead.

It is a commemoration plentiful of cheerful skulls, which settles the audience in the pre-Columbian traditions of the tzompantli, the sensation of the life’s fragility and the need of art to light it up. The Aztec poetry defined this lyricism as the effusion of flowers and songs (in xochilt in cuicatl). The Catrina Skull of José Guadelupe Puesta, the Sunday Dream of Diego Rivera, the parties of Pázcuaro and the skulls made of sugar of the altars for the dead, all the sensitivity and Mexican culture are impregnated with the feeling of interpenetration of the world of the living and the dead, well studied by Octavio Palau in ‘The Labyrinth of Solitude’.

The altar for the dead
The celebration of the Day of the Dead in Mexico goes back to the pre-Hispanic era, where people had already worshipped the death, conceiving it as a part of the nature cycle, the duality of life.   

The day of the dead is conceived as a day of celebration, full of amusement, flowers and colours, since it is believed that the dead person comes back to live with his family. In this way the day becomes a party, where the main element is the altar, made in tribute to the dead. 

The altar that is suggested by Adis Soriano on this exhibition, made of three floors and carried out in tribute to Frida Kahlo, has all the elements that are fundamental in its configuration, such as skulls, flowers or bread. The altar enables the audience to approach the death and makes them believe that one day they will also be invited to the party. 

The opening will take place on Wednesday 2 November, All Soul’s Day, and will count on the presence of the Mexican singer Marisela Guillén. The exhibition will be hold in the Muralla Hall in the Rector Peset Hall of Residence until 27 November, from Tuesday to Sunday, from 11:00 to 19:30.