Demián Flores, frontiersman of all Oaxacans

By Askari Mateos
On February 15th, The Gallery of the Autonomous University of Baja California in Tijuana, Mexico, and the University of Southern California’s Fisher Gallery in Los Angeles, simultaneously inaugurated the diverse artistry (video, graphics, painting, etc.) of a great Oaxacan master, Demián Flores, along with Los Chivos and José Hugo Sánchez.

Using mixed race and cultural hybridization as a jumping off point, together with strategic combat as irony (which Octavio Paz says in his work the “Laberinto de la Soledad” one can perceive as part of the Mexican Identity), Demián Flores simultaneously (bi-nationally) shows us a series of esoteric postulates which revolve around reflection and review as do the tools of the struggle against globalization.

In the artist’s own words, the idea is to project “the splitting between the two frontiers, generating a different vision of the same piece” and so in both exhibitions there are pieces (both video and other installations) which are complementary.

Flores defines himself as a juchilango, perhaps paralleling mixed race with the chicano (noting Guillermo Gomez-Peña). Olga Margarita Dávila, one of the curators who as much as anyone has worked with artists who allude to the borderlands in their works, invited Flores to exhibit in Los Angeles.

But Dávila wasn’t the only one to see parallels…Selma Holo, director of the Fisher Gallery at USC, in her book “Oaxaca at the Crossroads: Managing Memory, Negotiating Change,” devoted a chapter to the new Oaxacan artists, who from her perspective are able to have a significant impact not only their country of origin but also on the global community.

Flores’ works were some of the images which impacted the greatest on Holo, as a result of their absolute timeliness, their sense of belonging or pertinence, and their appeal to the human condition. “Within the context of global culture, Demián Flores is a citizen of the world. But he has deep roots, and we in California need someone to teach us the value of these roots.”

In the art of Demián Flores one finds the ideas of language and hybridization directly linked to life processes (born and raised in Juchitán, Oaxaca, he then migrated to Mexico City), whereupon he had to confront different types of realities which to a large extent served as blueprints enabling him to be able to work with the idea of mixed race, creating a contemporary metaphor with impurity as its driving force.

In an interview, Demián Flores stated: “My worries are similar to those of the borderland artists (chicanos and tijuaneses), but for me the notion of miscegenation (mixed race) is all the more isolating on the border.”

Flores sees more of a clash of cultures than their fusion, in that icons stand in the way of rather than create merger. Using the concept of identity, therefore, the creative Oaxacan advances the thesis that this phenomenon (migratory movement) modifies or transforms regional cultures, and for his part the artist is stimulated to create his own culture.” Within these works one can detect footsteps leading to Juchitán and Mexico City.

The themes in each of the two pieces are the same as those he’s used in his series of works “Novena” (baseball), “Cambio de Piel” and “Arena Oaxaca” (freestyle wrestling), “Monte Albán” (ball game and boxing), just like “Defensa Personal”, his most recent work.

He maintains that his work “is more a cultural product than an exhibition, because in order to reach a wider audience the work that’s created has to be thought of as social discourse”.

The intervention and movement of the art to public places, treated as if they were formal exhibition areas, gives testimony to the preceding statement.( he put a fighting ring in the Museo de la Ciudad de México; he made the Baseball Park the museum in the city of Oaxaca; he exhibited his work inside the Pascual-Boing bottling Plant.)

“These are strategies to influence the public because I don’t believe in art that hangs on gallery walls for the spectator…I believe in art that can be encountered in the paths and cycles within society; this is its documentary value.”

He is considering organizing something similar in Tijuana and Los Angeles to allow such access to the migrant community through workshops, conferences, exhibitions and the use of accessible spaces for the migrant communities in both cities.

This has propelled, thanks to the initiative of the Department of History of Art of USC, a series of artistic activities to unite art with society. One can find more information directly on the web: www.usc.edu/fishergallery.