Damián Ortega

In his diptych Los críticos and Fate (2022), Damián Ortega is concerned with the translation of time, language and sound into a textile medium. The finely embroidered, fragmented lines on brown linen were produced during the pandemic, when the artist was unable to use his studio and turned to embroidery as an intimate, meditative practice.

The work forms part of a series that Ortega created while listening to audiobooks and podcasts, and is inspired by the novel 2666 (2004) by the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. The two titles refer to chapters of the novel, whose narrative rhythm, arcs of tension and emotional intensity are translated into embroidered lines. Varying stitch densities and thread patterns render sound, pauses and narrative tempo visible and lend time a material form.

For Ortega, textiles are not decorative objects, but carriers of information and memory. Embroidery becomes a form of notation, comparable to a musical score, granting tangible expression to the rhythm of the body, the passage of time and the connection between literature, sound and material.

Diptych, cotton thread on linen, hand embroidery
Each 210.5 x 37.5 cm (artwork)
227 x 49.5 x 4.4 cm (framed)

Provenance: donated by the artist and Kurimanzutto Mexico City/New York