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North America

MCXT (Xara Thustra + Monica Canilao)
Our Bodies, Queer Bodies

MCXT’s  mural-size artwork, Our Bodies, Queer Bodies, uses abstraction, figuration, and text to imagine an ecstatic, mythic experience of queer community. The title of the work, which frames the image at the top and bottom of the composition, spells out a bold, slogan-like message which is nonetheless ambiguous in its use of the poetic slippage of the words “our” and “are.” The colorful palette and incorporation of pattern and typography are idiomatic of Mission School style, which is strongly influenced by graffiti, street signs, and the energy of the inner city. The composition divides into four sections which, from left to right, include a mesmerising yin-yang of indeterminate bodily forms, a stack of figures (perhaps an homage to victims of anti-queer violence), an abstract design rich in pattern and symmetry, and a vortex-like form that draws both bodies and patterns into its inexorable swirl.

Xara Thustra and Monica Canilao have been collaborating as MCXT since 2017. Their work is united by a shared belief that art is inseparable from resistance, community, and sacred mythology. Xara Thustra has employed art and street actions to protest capitalism, militarism, displacement, misogyny, and homophobia while fighting for trans rights and the needs of the dispossessed. Monica Canilao’s practice has focussed on community, collaboration and connection, using craft and found materials in an effort to express authenticity and personal strength. In their collaborative work, Thustra and Canilao have made several extraordinary, large-scale murals concerning queer and trans experience. MCXT’s work embodies the radical-progressive values of the San Francisco Bay Area counterculture, and their artistic style and strategies place them firmly in the context of the San Francisco Mission School. Thustra’s and Canilao’s ethos, artwork, and actions are aligned with those of the most well-known Mission School artists (McGee, Killgallen, McCarthy, Johansen) yet, in part because of their radical, counter-cultural positions they have been somewhat elusive and left out of most histories of this movement.