The El Aire Centro de Arte gallery celebrates three decades of uninterrupted work

The El Aire Centro de Arte gallery, an independent space founded by painters Carmen Parra and Emiliano Gironella, celebrates 30 years of uninterrupted work and celebrates it with an exhibition and a new project. The latter consists of the recovery of the house that belonged to the artist Miguel Covarrubias, inherited from his parents, in Tizapán, San Ángel, for its conversion into a cultural center that honors him.

“We are very happy because our neighbor César Cervantes bought the Covarrubias house to make it a cultural center and we are going to partner,” says Parra. The El Aire Centro de Arte gallery is located in “what was the Covarrubias property”: “Miguel and Rosa Rolanda (his first wife) did not have children; so she inherited it to her friend the architect Luis Barragán, who made a small subdivision with an aunt of mine who bequeathed me a piece of the Covarrubias house. It is a historic place in which we live.” Cervantes was responsible for purchasing and restoring Casa Prieto, in Jardines del Pedregal, built by Barragán between 1945 and 1950. Currently, the new cultural center is in the process of restoration.

“Everything is upside down”

Throughout its three decades of existence, the El Aire Centro de Arte gallery “has gone through storms, like everything else,” says the artist. It has been transformed because “everything is completely the other way around. What is above is below and what is below is above. Art has manifestations of all kinds because with artificial intelligence (AI) you make masterpieces. The challenge is to be yourself and faithful to your trajectory because the upheaval in which we live is continuous. There is no longer a focus of attention for current art. The manifestations are so many that you don’t know where the ball is.”

The challenge of an artist at this time is difficult because “we rely on poetry as the origin of images.” However, “poetry at this moment does not occupy any place. It is for a small group of the human species.”

From the beginning the gallery has been a “disseminator of art. As everything has changed, especially collecting and artistic language, we have had to adapt to these new expressions. But as we come from a very firm tradition, our roots are very deep in this country due to my education, my family, because we are children of the history of the 20th century of Mexico through all the people I have met, like Alberto Gironella, who was part of the Generation of Rupture, as well as artist friends “that have been erased from the panorama of Mexican history because there is no horizontal trajectory of the plastic arts.”

It is a kind of amnesia that has to do with changes: “as long as one continues working, one has to insist on one’s language because you cannot suddenly be an electronic artist, do AI things and completely change one’s personality. It is like an art that was left in limbo. We are descendants of this limbo; then we have to invent places, spaces, and move on because if not, what do you do. It is difficult to get out of limbo. This type of exhibition is to make a wake-up call in the sense of remembering that there are others in this worlds that are equally valid.”

We must “reiterate our own language.” As the museographer Fernando Gamboa said: “in Mexico you have to have several exhibitions a year because if not, you disappear. You have to ring the bell that you still exist. As we are artists outside the fair market, by having a world of your own you pay a great price.”

–Have you paid a great price?

–Of course, because being independent is for deluded and romantic people who believe that poetry is possible in everyday life. In this country that is so baroque in essence and with so many cultural manifestations, having a voice is a privilege. We are illustrators of our real time.

Being independent has cost Parra not only 30 years, but “a lifetime,” since he has also dedicated himself to the protection of cultural and natural heritage. “As I studied anthropology, I have the need to work with archaeologists and historians. We helped build an archeology museum on the Costa Grande of Guerrero, with the support of anthropologist Diego Prieto. I made several paintings and donations.”

As for the exhibition that celebrates its anniversary, it is about recent work by both artists, much of which is unpublished. There is no specific theme, but rather it reflects the different interests of the exhibitors. In the case of Gironella, the history of Mexico “is not really written; so everyone has a different version. He takes characters like Pancho Villa and turns them into ghosts of the history of Mexico.” His interest in boxing and bullfighting is also shown. Some of the pieces were made in his graphics workshop.

According to Parra, his painting The first globalization/The conquest of the Pacific: Zihuatanejo It is a historical document, referring to the fact that “the first ships did not leave Acapulco, but from Zihuatanejo, because the first shipyard in the Pacific Ocean was Zacatula, a nearby place.”

The exhibition Emiliano Gironella and Carmen Parra It opens today at 7:30 p.m. at the Mexican Institute for Justice (Francisco Sosa 409, Coyoacán).