• Artist : ZT Tosha
  Title: Fading Glory ( IMG 6235 )
  Material: Mixed media (oil and acrylic) on canvas
  Dimensions: 120 × 80 cm
  Year: 2018

Fading Glory is a mixed-media painting that reworks the image of the United States flag through processes of layering, scraping, and partial erasure. Using oil and acrylic together, ZT Tosha destabilises one of the most recognisable political symbols, transforming it from a sign of authority into a surface marked by wear and uncertainty.

Horizontal gestures suggest the flag’s stripes, while red, white, and blue are repeatedly disrupted, smeared, and absorbed into a dark ground. The materials behave differently over time: fast-drying acrylic establishes structure, while oil remains fluid, allowing forms to blur and slip. This tension produces an image that appears both asserted and undone.

Rather than depicting the flag as an object of celebration or critique, the work treats it as something subjected to use, repetition, and erosion. The title, Fading Glory, points to the instability of symbolic power and the way national imagery can lose clarity through historical pressure.

The painting situates itself within a broader contemporary practice that revisits abstraction as a means of political reflection, not through representation, but through material process. The flag emerges not as a fixed emblem, but as a fragile construction—one that can be worn down, altered, and re-read.