AMERICA IS THE QUESTION by Andy Medina extends the inquiry initiated in ‘Humano es la cuestión’, shifting the focus from the instability of the “human” to the contested meaning of “America.” Conceived in response to Cole Sternberg’s project The Free Republic of California, the mural interrogates the geopolitical and linguistic appropriation embedded in the use of “America” to refer exclusively to the United States. Medina repositions the term within its broader continental scope—encompassing Latin America, Central America, and the Caribbean—revealing how language operates as a structure of power. By presenting the title as a translation from Spanish, he deliberately disrupts the dominance of English, foregrounding translation as both a poetic and political act. In doing so, the work frames “America” not as a fixed national identity, but as an open, unresolved question shaped by colonial histories, territorial imaginaries, and competing narratives of belonging.
Cole Sternberg (b. 1979, Virginia, USA) is a Los Angeles–based conceptual artist whose multifaceted practice spans painting, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, film, and writing. His work examines humanity’s existential paradox: the impulse to create permanence in the face of the unyielding forces of nature and time. Sternberg’s projects explore thresholds of perception, erasure, and disruption, employing layered surfaces, poetic text, temporal interruption, and environmental processes to interrogate human systems and ideals.
Andy Medina
Andy Medina (b. 1993, Oaxaca City, Mexico) is a multidisciplinary artist and curator whose practice investigates language, signs, and visual systems as tools through which power, identity, and socio-political narratives are produced and interrogated. Working across painting, installation, object, and video, Medina engages with semiotics, vernacular symbols, and visual languages, exploring the balance, tension, and fragility inherent in communication. His work often draws attention to Indigenous languages and knowledge systems, particularly Zapotec, Mixe, and Mixtec, and extends into public interventions and community-focused projects.