Paños (Archaeology of Rage), 2017

In the work shown here, dozens of cotton cloths were smudged by the spray paint residue resulting from removing politically motivated graffiti tags from various public spaces in Mexico City. Each cloth and its corresponding stain stand in lieu of a removed slogan that expresses a feeling of rage and protest. The ruinous act of cleaning these messages transfigures the signs into pure abstraction – or simple random stains – while the original message is conserved in the individual title of each panel. Employing a deliberately clumsy methodology, this work seeks to register the memory of rabid furor in these texts, with the understanding that paradoxically, in order to do so, their readability is sacrificed.

Tercerunquinto is a collaboration between the Mexican artists Gabriel Cázares (born 1978 in Monterrey, Mexico) and Rolando Flores (born 1975 in Monterrey, Mexico). Founded in 1998, their institutional critique-driven practice is dedicated to investigative explorations into the dynamics of public and private spaces. Through a critical dismantling of the logical order of architecture, sculpture, and urbanism, Tercerunquinto’s work seeks to reveal these systems’ hold on social, cultural, and political domains. They live and work in Mexico City.

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