Prayer to Saint Emiliano Zapata

 

Generalísimo, foreseeing apostle of the assaults, misfortunes, and calamities of the peoples; intercede for your servant, alleviating the sorrows that afflict him.

By the justice that characterized your person, intimidate the infidels who harm the Fatherland.

 

Protector of the weak, orphans, and widows, aid me in urgent causes.

 

Holy Patron of the Southern Liberating Army, by the unlimited grace with which you inspired the many, I ask for strength to face the dark days and grant me the courage to endure sufferings.

 

Holy Caudillo of the South, restore my certainty that by fighting, a better tomorrow is possible.

 

Saint Emiliano Zapata, you who are the Saint of the lands, waters, and airs of Morelos, recognize the effort of your humble servant, shelter him and protect him so that he does not abandon faith.

 

This is the honest longing of my soul.

 

Saint Emiliano Zapata, defender of the peoples and their struggles, pray for us.

 

Prayer text credit: 

Poetess, Dzoara Delgado

"And in that in-between space,
that Nepantla,
the two shores can be glimpsed without reaching either."
— Elsa Cross, Nepantla (Fragment)

 

Inhabiting the liminal space is part of the untamed character of Master Victor Gochez's work.

Through this retrospective exhibition, we can keep him company on his six-decade journey toward the middle, riding on the backs of fat flying cows alongside a solitary rider who wanders the hills and plains at the foot of the volcanoes, accompanied by nahuales, tecuanes, chinelos, angels, and a multitude of animals and characters with whom Gochez has populated the Nepantla landscape.

 

A parallel path is the one undertaken by the master toward the simplicity that only mastery of the craft can grant, and for this we accompany him from academicism toward abstraction to arrive at the figurative style he currently presents—which, contrary to appearances, is anything but naive, but rather manifests the master's rebellion against the terribleness of existence in its overflowing joy. In Nepantla, even dark beings experience happiness.

 

Another direction in the master's work that we explore in this exhibition is the one he embarked on from the fine arts toward the expressions of Morelos's living cultures, positioning himself on the border between both sources of Mexican creativity and occupying his Nepantla—or the special place that Gochez holds in the cultural sphere of our state, which equally allows him to exhibit in this venue or to be part of the great masters of Morelos folk art and show his work just a block and a half from here, at the Morelos Museum of Popular Art.

 

But Victor Gochez's plastic work does not stop there (does it ever?), and it also encompasses the performing arts, in which he has collaborated as a set designer for film, television, and theater, creating scenographies and costumes of which, due to their scale, we have gathered a small sample here.

 

These avenues or rivers of life and creativity (or others that you propose) converge in the space created by the liminal, untamed, free, and joyful plastic art where Master Victor Gochez awaits us.

 

-Rodolfo Candelas Castañeda