Watch Now: Oscar Santillán

Presenting with Copperfield at Frieze London 2022 as part of Indra's Net, curated by Sandhini Poddar

For Ecuadorian artist and writer, Oscar Santillán, the term “Antimundo” is a generative space — a space where one’s normal assumptions about the world are upended and transfigured. Investigating knowledge arenas such as Artificial Intelligence, Amazonian and Andean terraforming, cybernetics and science fiction, Santillán brings to his artistic practice a transhistorical and transdisciplinary approach. At Frieze London, Santillán’s project, Forecast, 2022, utilizes the form of a Wardian case (used in colonial botany) to encase a hidden garden, which is illuminated through a set of six screens displaying apocalyptic films on a loop. Current debates on ecology and technology are highlighted in this sculpture as well as in the artist’s “Antimundo” series of paintings and light boxes.

About Indra's Net

Derived from ancient Buddhist and Hindu thought forms, Indra’s Net refers to an ethics of being, where an individual atom holds within it the structure of reality. Imagine a vast bejewelled net: at every nexus there is

a reflective orb that mirrors and refracts every other orb in its entirety. Each part is held within the whole in a system of dependent origination. All sentient life is interconnected; shifts to one atom subtly alter the rest.

Curated by Sandhini Poddar, this group presentation brings together leading international artists whose practices are informed by this prescient metaphor. In various media, we learn of ancestry, history, language, consciousness and futurity as being bound to the earth, which serves as a perennial witness through the arc of time. 

In the video above, Santillan shares his response to the question, 'What does interconnectedness mean to you?', an enquiry which is at the heart of the section.

Find Out More about Indra's Net