A common yellow warning sign is supposed to be a triangle with an exclamation mark, alerting you to something ahead. But in Andy Medina's hands, that triangle gets stretched and beveled until it becomes the silhouette of a Mesoamerican pyramid. It takes a second glance before you realize this isn't a design error—it's a deliberate substitution.
Medina, who hails from Oaxaca, Mexico, has long worked in signage, installation, printmaking, and textiles doing exactly this: taking visual symbols so familiar the public has stopped thinking twice about them, breaking them apart, feeding them through the imagery of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and reassembling them anew. His latest solo exhibition, "MEX I CAN," is now on view at John Doe Gallery in Los Angeles. Walking into the space feels like standing at an overexposed intersection—fragments of road signs, reflective materials, and street debris are scattered throughout, and it's only up close that you notice every piece has been tampered with.
The exhibition title is itself a play on words: "MEX I CAN" is both a dismantling and reconstruction of "Mexican," and a blunt personal declaration. In a statement, Medina notes that the phrase carries particular weight right now, as Mexican American communities face political and cultural pressure—"in the struggle of having one's identity denied, adaptability and resilience ultimately prevail." This isn't an abstract identity-politics slogan; it maps directly onto the altered public symbols throughout the show—signs that once belonged here, now being reclaimed and re-authored.
The show also features Medina's "Superarme" series, which directly appropriates Supreme's instantly recognizable visual identity—though the point isn't simply to spoof a streetwear logo. He swaps out the brand's wordmark for his own linguistic play, using a shell everyone recognizes to draw viewers into a vision of Mexico built from layers of overlapping culture and history.
Several other works are dedicated to Mexican racing drivers Sergio "Checo" Pérez and Pedro Rodríguez, extending the same inquiry into identity onto the F1 track. Medina puts it plainly: "The intent is to update the visibility and standing of Mexican culture within the world of competitive sport."
From traffic signs and streetwear logos to racing emblems and ancient iconographic traditions, "MEX I CAN" keeps circling back to the same question: once a symbol has been appropriated, collaged, and renamed, does its original ownership still hold any weight? The exhibition is currently on view at John Doe Gallery; specific dates and ticketing details were not included in the publicly released materials.
