ZⓈONAMACO ART WEEK

For La Semana del Arte ZONAMACO, Morán Morán presents a project featuring a singular artwork by Soil Thornton. Presented in Morán Morán’s new permanent exhibition space in Polanco, Thornton’s painting, Flagging, What constitutes itself as a stain to the constitution (pan cuneiform), reveals a two-dimensional expression of the artist’s concerns around identity, borne out of the 2020 social justice protests in the United States. The painting images a series of carefully rendered diagonal bands of color that loosely reference a rainbow flag (an image that is symbolic of the LGBTQ+ movement), and spray painted over this abstracted flag are the words “queer” and “black.” The words are obscured by the manner in which they are collocated, so not only is the symbol of the flag disrupted but the words that provide racial and sexual distinction are connected, instead appearing like cuneiform script. As with all of their work, Thornton explores medium and communication alongside context and interpretation, distorting the function of imagery and the significance of words, while considering identity through the process.