David Bowie's "Deranged" plays as you enter the small exhibition room at CROMA, where Pilar Córdoba Longar’s five-piece collection, Una rosa en la oscuridad [A Rose in the Dark], is on display. Her recent work features elements alluding to automotive and highway themes, presented in cross-stitch embroidery, gridded fabrics, chrome license plate frames, black bases, and bright green lines. As I continue to gaze at the black fabric of the embroideries in Una rosa en la oscuridad, No paramos de matarnos and Alejas [A Rose in the Dark, We Never Stop Killing Ourselves, and You Drift Away], I am engulfed by a cyclical sense of confusion, memory, and phantom-like imagery, reminiscent of the greasy hands on a yellow silk dress from Lost Highway (Lynch, D. 1997). I feel the presence of the highway, as in the film’s opening and closing sequences, where night merges sky and asphalt. Yet there is also softness—the tension of fabric against the sharp chrome frame—recalling childhood memories of sitting in the foam-filled, fabric-upholstered backseat of a family car. There’s something here beyond the toxic masculinity of a Lynchian leather interior. The piece El lugar en mi mente que todavía no es memoria [The Place in My Mind That Hasn’t Yet Become Memory] condenses this feeling in its title: the liminal space between ‘now’ and ‘what was,’* the tension in which we exist.

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From October 10 to 20, 2024, the 008 edition of Trámite Buró de Coleccionistas took place in Querétaro, focusing on the theme Desire. Affective Movements. Onda MX partnered with the platform to select an artist and promote their work through an interview. Josephine Dorr (founder and director) and Sandra Sánchez (editor of the magazine) chose the work of Prisciliano, who presented LA SUERTE ESTÁ ECHADA, a cement and graphite surface featuring the drawing of a mosquito and the phrase “perdóname” [forgive me]. Both agreed that the work holds an enigma—highlighted by the presence of the mosquito—within a straightforward phrase that resonates differently with each viewer. This dual relationship, between literalness and indeterminacy, made Prisciliano the winner of the diffusion prize.

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I hope the angel and the monkey get confused, like two drops of dew that roll and meet on a rose petal.

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It’s striking how colors and shapes seduce us. For ages, objects with their alluring and delirious surfaces have moved bodies—from the countryside to the city and, within the city, through its labyrinths and passages. With colonial modernity, the world became filled with a variety of objects from across the globe, along with the many techniques used to make them. Visual and material diversity grew beyond measure.

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