In his book Retlatos, José Ángel Leyva puts himself “in the clothes” of 30 artists interviewed by him.

▲ José Ángel Leyva during the presentation of his book, which originated in a series of installments published in La Jornada . Photo by Paula Carrizosa

Paula Carrizosa

The Eastern Journey

La Jornada Newspaper, Monday, June 9, 2025, p. 5

Puebla, Pue., José Ángel Leyva (Durango, 1958) presented his most recent book Retlatos: Portraits and stories of visual artists in Mexico at the 38th National Book Fair (Fenali) of the Benemérita Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP) .

The poet, narrator and journalist said that the volume is based on what many of the 30 characters who appear would have liked to write and what he wrote, among them Manuel Felguérez, José Luis Cuevas, Pedro Valtierra, Rodrigo Moya, Flor Garduño, Graciela Iturbide, Patricia Aridjis, Flor Minor and Pablo Rulfo, as well as 21 other artists.

"I am that character who comes out in the clothes, to see what he thinks and what he wants, and one day become him. In these stories, I somehow transform into them ," he stated, accompanied by fellow poet Eduardo Langagne and editor Cuitláhuac Quiroga, of whom he emphasized: "He took on the challenge of publishing this book with the Autonomous University of Puebla ."

He added that a writer friend once told him he was a domestic poet , which caught his attention. He told me I wasn't a character, but rather a man of my home; I thought he was right, because I hadn't forged myself into a character. What's really interesting is being a witness to reality and discovering the characters .

The editor and cultural promoter also said that each short story begins with a tanka, a traditional Japanese poetic form of 31 syllables divided into five verses of five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables, which are a sort of device for the interviewee.

He noted that this volume, published by the Tilde publishing house and the BUAP Publications Department, stems from a series of installments published in La Jornada.

“I once asked an Albanian writer what his country's literary richness consisted of; he replied: 'My country, like Mexico, is rich in oral tradition, and as long as a nation has something to tell, that ability to narrate its own life, there will be a literary source.'”

Therefore, the contributor to La Jornada Semanal said that the challenge is to translate these oral stories into writing, because there is a leap into the void and what can occur, although not necessarily, is the magic by which an oral narrator can seduce us .

In his case, he mentioned that his idea was to turn the conversations, those investigations and lives of artists, into characters .

In turn, editor Cuitláhuac Quiroga confided that the book Retlatos: Portraits and Stories of Visual Artists in Mexico is clearly rare in the panorama of Mexican literature, as it embodies the life, work, endeavors and deeds of 30 Mexican artists, some naturalized and others in the process of doing so, while others "fervently adopted themselves as Mexicans. Today we witness a book that demonstrates his prose clarity, the mastery with which he glides through words and highlights the incarnations and the incarnations (...)", he expressed.

He agreed that José Ángel Leyva has the ability to embody those 30 artists, put on their clothes and go through their processes, ravings, delusions, appetites, fractures, desires, aesthetic elaboration , because he gives a central note of the procedures: how art is thought, felt and practiced in the country .

The poet Eduardo Langagne highlighted that in this volume Leyva is placed as one of the living Mexican authors with a forward-looking creative process, which has influenced the search for proposals in his poetic and prose part , therefore, with this set of interviews, worked in an emotional way, he manages to detect what each artist has in his creation.

Likewise, he emphasized that it is an important book for the vitality of art in Mexico, as it allows us to learn about the artists featured in the edition, which also offers a play on words that seeks to semantically reinterpret and offer a novel take on the work of the founder and director of the publishing house and literary magazine La Otra.

Silvia Chávez González

Correspondent

La Jornada Newspaper, Monday, June 9, 2025, p. 5

Tepotzotlán, Mexico, The National Museum of the Viceroyalty (MNV) opens to the public the exhibition The Art of Storing in New Spain, which displays austere travel furniture used during the Conquest, which in the 17th and 18th centuries began to be used as fixed furniture intended to house belongings or decorate the spaces of the Iberian population.

Eva María Ayala Canseco, director of the MNV; Patricia Zapata Villasana, the venue's deputy technical director; Itzamara Vargas Machiavelo, curator of the exhibition; and guests participated last Friday in the opening of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) exhibition through the venue. The exhibition will remain open until July 20.

Vargas Machiavelli explained that in the early years of the Conquest, the furniture was very austere; however, it allowed for the transportation of the necessary equipment for the Spanish who, after the occupation of Tenochtitlan, began to settle for longer periods of time, which required creating their own spaces, in keeping with their customs and habits.

In this way, furniture that was once travel-friendly and austere took up a permanent place in offices, bedrooms, living rooms, and hallways in buildings where the conquistadors began to live.

By the 17th and 18th centuries, they were already decorative furniture, to which were added carpets, tables, chairs, and other items that also provided comfort and luxury, Vargas Machiavelli commented.

The art of keeping in New Spain exhibits 18 pieces from the 17th and 18th centuries, including wooden chests with wrought iron fittings and decoration, leather-covered wooden chests with iron fittings and iron, and cast and polychrome iron treasure chests, as well as the sculpture Taller de San José (Workshop of Saint Joseph), made of carved, polychrome and upholstered wood, and the oil on canvas painting La inquietud del conocimiento (The Restlessness of Understanding), among other objects.

The thematic cabinet exhibition is organized into two sections: one dedicated to the travel furniture that initially arrived from New Spain and later became permanent fixtures and was used to decorate the space along with other objects.

The second includes furniture construction materials, as well as their uses, and the work of the trades involved in their creation, with the aim of understanding why storage in New Spain furniture was an art.

The exhibition is open Tuesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a ticket price of 100 pesos and the usual discounts. On Sundays, admission is free for Mexicans and foreigners residing in Mexico.