The Embassy of Mexico has the honor to invite you to the opening ceremony of the artistic exhibition:

México-Tenochtitlan
Photos by Francisco Mata

Thursday, 17 September 2009 at 6:30 p.m.
Institute of Mexico
Newtown Barracks and Wilson Street
Belize City

MEXICO-TENOCHTITLAN

Mexico City is destroyed daily. On its ruins rose another city that will be destroyed by human hands, time or earthquakes, so that on the rubble, new social relations and other architectural forms are built to represent it. It is a huge city where the Templo Mayor reborn from its grave and the wounded Cathedral does not collapse as yet.


This city awakens fascination and fear, love and hate: like the history of the ancient Gods, it is a continuing cycle of destruction and renaissance, a change of skins and shapes, sacrifice and starting over.

FRANCISCO MATA-ROSAS, committed to the work of capturing images, reveals through his photographs the living face of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the city where he was born in 1958.

His photographic work has been published in some of the most important newspapers and magazines in USA, Spain, Canada, Italy, UK and Mexico. His photographs have been exhibited in Mexico, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, UK, USA, Japan, Argentina and Brazil, among others.

These images allow us to see the city in multiple manifestations such as the great staging of the popular myths that are testimony of living cultural manifestations which are pointing to the imaginary conception of the vanquished: those defeated by the Conquest, not freed by the Independence or redeemed by the Mexican Revolution.

There has been emphasis on the nature of the connection between fiesta and tragedy in Mexican culture as well as the overwhelming presence of death in the conception of life of the Mexicans, where the fiesta is ritual, bond, renovation and absolution; but also the sacrifice, carnival and non return visit to the land of the dead.