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An outdoor freestanding sculpture of a single steel continuous line that transitions from one institutional structure to another in order to stand tenuously on its own and support other collapsing structures. The order of the structures within the continuous line is as follows: a wilted rope, a flagpole, the outline of a chain-link fence (borders), a police barricade (more borders), and finally a tree branch/stick (the organic weak link) in monochromatic matte-jet black of a military drone.
The line begins with a wilted rope and ends with a small twig. The organic materials are holding the other cultural power structures in between to support that one line. The reference is also of bodies holding up a flag, as in the Iwo Jima moments of soldiers holding up a flag, but this time it's the structures of institutions barely holding it together.
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“A tension between the handmade and industrial fabrication, and between presence and absence, runs throughout much of Lopez’s work, and it is often difficult to discern what has been created by the artist’s body and what has been produced by machine. For Lopez, this physical engagement with her materials and their alchemical properties is paramount, but equally important is the experience of the viewer who navigates her installations and interprets the many layers of cultural codes embedded within them. Her symbol system is in part connected to a process of drawing, and the artist sees all of her lines in space as having a relationship to the inky strokes she marks on paper. But it is also partially derived from Lopez’s upbringing. 'Filipino culture,' she observes, 'has a dizzying array of colonial hybridity, which in and of itself forms part of its identity. I can’t emphasize enough how important this was to my formation as an artist.' 4 This fluidity of signification is also evident in one of Lopez’s most recent works, Continuous Line (2019), in which chromed steel morphs between a twig, a rope, a chain-link fence, a barricade, and a flag. It suggests that these forms are interdependent physically and metaphorically, representing nature and culture, but also the borders and boundaries imposed by the state.”
-Alex Klein, curator, Ballast & Barricades 2019, excerpt of ICA curatorial notes