Scriptorium con safos: is a sculptural installation and ongoing performance series. It is a bibliographic and space-making project; books marking the space reference artworks on view nearby.
The installation and opportunity to activate provide a means of studying works on view. Scriptoria can be activated by the artist, institutional staff, and anyone else who encounters it.
Con safos - a Chicano term that signals solidarity, protection, and completion of a work of art. It typically appears abbreviated as “C/S” in paintings, murals, personal correspondence and a broad range of Chicano visual culture. In this performance, it serves two purposes: marking a physical space in which the artist or visitor can practice art history how they wish; protecting the body and signaling its freedom from art historical convention.
Further information and documentation available on request.
National Gallery of Art
April 9, 2026
Franco is from West Texas, where Dan Flavin’s untitled (Marfa project), 1996 plays a significant role in the visual landscape and images of the region that circulate in the art world. Franco was also an Artist-Guide at 101 Spring Street, Judd Foundation, where he spent hours studying a portion of Flavin’s icons series and the large room-spanning untitled, 1970 that are permanently installed there as part of the preserved home and studio of artist Donald Judd. In this performance, Franco contemplates his relationship to Flavin’s work and legacy while studying one of his most significant bodies of work, a series of “monuments” dedicated to avant-garde Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin.
The books installed here are borrowed from the National Gallery of Art Library, which Franco utilized as a 2025 Lauder Visiting Senior Fellow.
Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College
September 11-12, 2025
Part of the exhibition Gathering Place: Permanent Collection Reinstallation
Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
September 29, 2024
Part of the exhibition Where I Learned to Look: Art From the Yard
Syracuse University Art Museum
August 24, 2023 - May 12, 2024
Part of the exhibition Scriptorium con safos: Syracuse
DePauw University
October 6, 2017
Part of Carol Bowers Norris Visiting Artist series
This was the first scriptorium to take place in an institution. It began with a procession from the university art studios to the library. At the library, the performance took place using books on Chicano art and Minimalism that were formative to my intellectual development.
Backyard, Hyattsville, Maryland
October 1, 2017
The first scriptorium—Scriptorium con safos: Invocation—took place in a backyard in my neighborhood in Hyattsville, Maryland. Outdoors on a cool night next to an active fire pit, and with a small group of invited guests, the night was initially conceived as a rehearsal, but now stands in my mind as a full-on iteration of the work. It was more enchanted, primal, and intimate and the only iteration not made in response to an institutional collection.