A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, 2021 (2021)

Oscar Santillán, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, 2021, weaving made of yarn from each century of the past millennia. 240x240x350cm, Courtesy: Livia Benavides – 80m

For A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, ten old weavings – each dating back to each century of the last millennia, each coming from distant places in the world – have been unknitted and consequently reassembled into a new weaving. The oldest weaving taken apart to be integrated into the piece is from the Chimú culture (nowadays Peru), about 1000 years old. A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History embodies a historical sedimentation of hypothetical kinships, it embodies the coming together of unrelated material cultures, it is an unknown version of the world in which colonialism has been replaced by non-linear narratives.