'Consummatum est'

TOMORROW, March 15, should have been the last day of Saul Hofileña Jr. and Guy Custodio’s “HoCus 2: Cuadricula” exhibit at the National Museum (NM) of Fine Arts, but the coronavirus disease 2019 community quarantine has forced the closing of the museum. It would have been the eve of the 499th anniversary of Ferdinand Magellan’s arrival in the Philippines. It could be noted that if this global pandemic was caused by globalization, the smallpox epidemic that the Spanish colonizers accidentally brought to Mexico wiped out populations of native peoples.

End-of-the-world scenarios showing many dead bodies was a favorite theme of both the HoCus 1 and 2 exhibits, for example, in the painting “La Pesadilla” (The Nightmare), alluding to the many deaths that happened throughout regimes in our history and how some people (symbolized by a lady fixing herself in front of the mirror) were apathetic to it all in spite of the chaos around them. The government response, of course, aims to prevent us from this kind of scenario and, hopefully, we have learned from history. But, as the old folks say, crises bring out the best and the worst in people.