AZTLÁN, Demián Flores

As part of its Gabinete Gráfico (Graphic Cabinet) program, the MACG presents the exhibition Aztlán by “Juchitecan-Chilango” artist Demián Flores (1971). In this exhibit, Flores utilized the graphic media as a concept understood through constant redefinitions  based on  changes taking place within the context of the registration and reproduction of a given image.

Coming into place in these works are the diversification of possibilities for generating an image  -recycling, drawing, and montage-  formal expansion of its supports  -the bodywork of a car and digital media-  and  experimentation with traditional technical approaches. Aztlán represents a questioning of the elements that characterizing the graphic media  -record, support, permanence, and  seriality-  in favor of other ways of graphic production, reproduction, and distribution.

This project stems from a recurrent representation surrounding the vindication of cultural identities – -the pilgrimage  to Aztlán*-  to address the notion of  the migrations of persons that prompts the need to redefine regional identities and fragile territorial demarcations, thus creating  nomadic imaginary constructed in function of the “North” and one that questions  a reality that manifests itself as a pressing problematic in contemporary culture.

Approached as a laboratory of works framed by a technical and conceptual territory, Aztlán views graphic art not as a media in itself, but as an active component affecting other artistic disciplines and covers territorial notions, memory, and identity.

Demián Flores/Santiago Pérez-Garci

*Aztlán is an islet and the Aztecs’ point of departure for the foundation of México-Tenochtítlan. It is represented as an island inside a lake. Its presumed existence and coordinates have been obscured by historiography.