Santiago Borja

Cosmic Tautology I

2012

Cosmic Tautology I, 2012

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Cosmic Tautology I and II are two textile pieces representative of Santiago Borja’s practice and long-standing interest in disrupting universalist assumptions of minimalism by connecting them with other, non-Western or esoteric references. They were hand-woven in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico, and are composed of nine squares, the middle one left unwoven. Their composition is based on Red Square, White Letters (1962) by Sol Lewit, but they also take cues from works like Black Series II by Frank Stella. Borja however introduces traditional Mayan motifs in order to interrogate the nature of abstraction and language. Textiles are intimately related to both text and architecture. As such, they are codified systems as well as building mechanisms that are connected to communication. Likewise, geometry is understood here as a form of text. The minimalist references as well as the Mayan motifs operate as coding systems, or conceptual axioms that defy the purely representational.

Santiago Borja’s work explores improbable connections between different thought systems, thus emphasizing the cannibalistic nature of modernism, and its inherently esoteric, yet seemingly “rational”, character. His collaborations with craftspeople, where dialogue and exchange of ideas define the final outcome, offer a possibility to overlap these different forms of knowledge production, understanding manual work as an expression of codes that are culturally situated. He often intervenes in iconic modernist architecture (Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, Richard Neutra’s house, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion) disrupting its international style, connecting it to other forms of understanding the built environment. He has also explored psychoanalytic theories, especially those of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Jacques Lacan, creating situations where he also explores the non-Western approaches to what we call the unconscious.

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Santiago Borja Cosmic Tautology I

Santiago Borja

Cosmic Tautology I