sidestepthenorm |  | Demián is showing in London this year e-mail us for more details |
| The new generation of Oaxacan painters |
| Demián Flores Cortés was born in 1971 in Juchitán, an important city in the Istmo region of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. This region, made famous by its very beautiful and very strong women, plays home to a unique subculture known as the Muxe ('mooshay'), a multi-generational tribe of homosexual 'lady-boys' who dress as extremely effeminate men most of the time and as highly exaggerated Diana Ross-style cabaret queens when partying. This tribe, and the questioning homo-erotic content of happily married Demián's work are both effects of this incredibly-open matriarchal society. Upon graduating with a degree in visual arts from la Universidad Autónoma de México, Demián turned his creative skill and visual knowledge to expressing his way of seeing the world around him as a young, educated Mexican with Zapotec indigenous roots so contrary to the over-globalised media-backed chaos that is modern society. following excerpt from "Demián Flores: Sparkling Syncretism" by Germaine Gómez Haro "From the very start, the art of Demián Flores has been expressing the complexities of cultural mestizaje. In his constant commuting between Juchitán and Mexico City he has woven an intricate network of references and analogies between the istmeña tradition of his homeland and the urban environment where he grew up and became an artist.
As a hybrid product, his work reflects his concerns about the survival of Zapotec roots in a world increasingly homogenized by an all-encompassing globalization....Demián mixes shock images and, through iconic deconstruction and decoding, he poses the relevance of cultural symbiosis." |
 | next Lulu work |
| Demián Flores Cortés | Lulu 2003 |
To be shown in Amsterdam March 2004. |