TEX-VEX (For a Lone Star), 2022 - ongoing
Tactical clothing, tactical patches, raw fabric flags, performance, digital video.
This work reflects on the material effects of political symbols. By collecting archival photos of armed demonstrators in Texas and historical paintings from the Battle of Gonzales—the beginning of Texan independence from Mexico—I hand-sewed the stars depicted in those images and placed them on handmade flags, as a way to explain the death they have caused in Coahuila—my state, which was once united with Texas until its independence. I wrote a poem to the LONE STAR. I read it to it, I touched it, I caressed it, I ripped it. I decided to dress like the ones who bear it, trying to become them to understand what a LONE STAR can do, its historical weight, and how pathetic it is to hold that much heaviness.
*Project carried out in the residency grant program “NI DE AQUÍ NI DE ALLÁ” by Cobertizo.
How to defend oneself from images when there are no innocent images?
In the context of Texan Independence—when Texas separated from Mexico and, therefore, from Coahuila—flags emerged that condensed a sentiment still present north of the border: freedom, even if it runs with blood.
Texan vexillology records among its annals the Troutman Flag, designed by Joanna Troutman in 1836. It depicts a solitary star and the phrase “LIBERTY OR DEATH.” Today, it stands as a Texan identity emblem which, together with other icons of similar origin, functions as a symbolic instrument defending the free flow of arms commerce in the United States—a reason that facilitates the illegal entry of weapons into Mexico. Seventy percent of these come from Texas, crossing through what is today the Comarca Lagunera.
LIBERTY FOR DEATH is a steel armor plate useless in material terms, but which operates on a symbolic dimension by posing the following dilemma: whose freedom, at the cost of whose death?
*Project carried out in the residency grant program “NI DE AQUÍ NI DE ALLÁ” by Cobertizo, shown in RASTRO Galería.
Two-channel video, photography, bullet-ridden trunk, flags.
text.
7'20''
In 1835, during the Battle of Gonzalez, in the former State of Coahuila and Texas, the Mexican army demanded that the Texan independentistas surrender and hand over a cannon. The Texans responded by raising a makeshift flag that showed a star –as they call themselves “the lone star state”–, a cannon and the phrase “COME AND TAKE IT”. By 1836, the Texans gained independence from Mexico –with the support of the US government– and separated from Coahuila and Mexico. This banner was adapted to current times and conditions; It no longer shows an old cannon, it shows an AR-15. Between 2009 and 2013 I lived through the most violent period we have experienced in the Comarca Lagunera, which is located between the cities of Torreón in Coahuila, and Lerdo and Gómez Palacio in Durango. This region was in conflict between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Los Zetas Cartel. During that same period, the "Fast and Furious" operation was carried out between the US government and the Mexican government, which consisted of allowing the flow of weapons purchased in the United States to Mexico in order to locate arms trafficking routes. One of the discoveries of that failed operation was that more than half of the weapons illegally trafficked into Mexico come from Texas.
Among the people displaced by this situation is the pilot, a car enthusiast who migrated to the United States in 2010 because his neighborhood was occupied by a cartel. With his nationalized Mexican 84 Mustang, he drifts on the dry bed of the Nazas River, which divides the region between the two states. He waves a couple of “COME AND TAKE IT” flags, the insignia of the most conservative sector of gringo society. With this flag, this sector defends its right to buy and possess weapons with the minimum of restrictions, without knowing that the exercise of its rights causes death outside its borders.
It's funny how a Hollywood police car fiction can cross with reality; I do not believe that the years in which the most violent period in my region occurred and in which the "Fast and Furious" operation was carried out were coincidental. I purchased this pair of flags from a Texan I contacted in a far-right group on Facebook.
At the same time, a bullet-ridden trunk from a Tsuru III serves as the base to hold the flags. I also found this trunk on Facebook Marketplace.