Los Moscos
- Artist: Mark Bradford
- Date: 2004
- Medium: Mixed media on canvas
- Dimensions: support: 3179 x 4843 x 40mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Los Moscos” by Mark Bradford, created in 2004. It’s a huge mixed‑media collage that feels like a hand‑drawn aerial map of an ever‑expanding city. Bradford collected paper fragments—newspapers, flyers, postcards—right outside his Los Angeles studio and glued them onto a canvas in a dense, layered fashion. He says the paper “acts as memory of things pasted and things past,” so if you peel back a layer, it’s like reading street signs and forgotten traffic signs from a different time. The title itself comes from a slang term for migrant day‑labourers in the San Francisco Bay Area, hinting at Bradford’s long‑standing fascination with the under‑seen sub‑cultures of inner cities. The work is both abstract and narrative, using texture, printed text and fragmented geometry to invite viewers to read the city’s hidden stories. It’s a striking reminder that every city is a collage of moments waiting to be uncovered.
See it in person
Los Moscos is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
