Curtis Talwst Santiago Offsides Opening 19 September 2025 / 6-9pm
Exhibition views
-
Exhibition text by Petra Giloy-Hirtz & Curtis Talwst Santiago
Curtis Talwst Santiago works across painting, sculpture, diorama, sound, and performance to interrogate systems of control — historical, spatial, spiritual — and the spaces where those systems break. His practice is rooted in ancestral research, diasporic memory, speculative history, and metaphysical geometry. But it is also grounded in urgency: Who gets to move? Who defines the field? What happens when the rules are broken — or never meant for you to begin with?
In Offsides, Santiago uses the language of football — specifically the rule of “offside” — as a structural metaphor for positional illegitimacy: social, political, moral, and spiritual. The offside rule is not visible on the pitch. Until recently it was imaginary and conditional. But now is enforced through the use of AI. So too are many of the boundaries that define who is permitted to speak, to be seen, to act, or to arrive..
The exhibition’s centerpiece, The Inner Architect / The Field of Manifestation (2025), is a diptych that stages the tension between consciousness and form. On one side, a translucent figure emerges from dream space; on the other, that gesture extends into what Santiago names the “Harmonic Inversion Field” — a conceptual realm where thought becomes structure. Across the exhibition, elements from the game reappear: a ball, a line, a foot, a flag. But they do not depict; they signal — each one a cipher for movement, resistance, permission, or anticipation. Sometimes experiencing moments of intimacy with one another, as if dancing around the pitch.
Offsides is not just about the game. It’s about how rules are made, who they’re made for, and what becomes possible when you step beyond them. Santiago doesn’t offer resolution — he builds a field of potential, a speculative space in which to reimagine timing, alignment, and freedom.
Petra Giloy-Hirtz Curtis Talwst Santiago