Sat, Jun 27
|Highways
OPENING: Rubén Esparza - Untitled Flag
A striking red-on-red flag installation, a one-time durational performance inspired by the Maya Red Queen, and an immersive original soundscape converge in a powerful exploration of memory, resistance, history, and the enduring echoes of colonial and imperial power.
Time & Location
Jun 27, 2026, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Highways, 1651 18th St, Santa Monica, CA 90404, USA
About The Event
Artist Rubén Esparza presents a new site-specific sculptural work from his ongoing Untitled Flag series, reimagining the American flag through a monochromatic red-on-red palette. By stripping the flag of its traditional colors, Esparza transforms a familiar national symbol into a meditation on history, memory, and power, drawing attention to the enduring legacies of systemic oppression, racialized trauma, and social inequity while also evoking the human cost of war and global conflicts involving the United States.
Lechedevirgen Performs Red Queen (MX)
Inspired by the archaeological discovery of Lady Tz’akbu Ajaw, the seventh-century Maya ruler known as the “Red Queen” of Palenque, Lechedevirgen’s durational performance reflects on colonial and imperial violence while connecting the ancestral histories of Abya Yala with contemporary forms of poetic resistance. Drawing on the symbolic use of red—referencing the cinnabar that covered the Red Queen’s remains—the work explores relationships between North and South, past and future, and body and space in dialogue with Rubén Esparza’s installation, Untitled Flag. One time Performance June 27th — 5 to 7 pm
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Peter Kalisch — Original Sound Score
An original sound score by Peter Kalisch accompanies the installation and performance, creating an immersive sonic environment that deepens the dialogue between memory, history, resistance, and place.