FORT DA // SAMPLER at the Neutra VDL House

FORT DA // SAMPLER is a site-specific installation by Mexico City-based artist Santiago Borja. The artist and his collaborators have erected a temporary, functioning textile loom transforming the roof of architect Richard Neutra’s family home. Borja’s architectural intervention encourages new readings of this place, and what he sees as the elusive nature of “magical thinking” embedded in Modernism. The project grows from the formal similarities between modern abstract geometry and Mayan patterning used to represent the cosmos. The installation title comes from Borja’s study of Freud’s “Fort / Da” theory, which says that the symbolic allows us to manage the discrepancies between pleasure and reality. Freud developed his theory while watching a child repeatedly throw a wooden reel attached to a string over a ledge. The child would watch it disappear, retrieve it, and then throw it back again. Freud theorized that this game was how the child managed his anxiety created by the absence of his mother. Borja takes this theory further, envisioning the act of throwing the reel as a way to trace an emotional space that visually and physically connects us to a distant place. In Chiapas, as in other areas of Mexico, young apprentices establish their identity as textile makers through the creation of several samplers that codify the entire textile language. The process of weaving and embroidering these samplers connect them to past, present, and future textile processes, creating a dialogue with the cosmic and natural world around them. About the Artist Santiago Borja has a Bachelor Degree in Architecture from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico and a Master on Theory and Practice of Contemporary Art and New Media from Université Paris 8. Recent projects include Divan, Freud Museum, London, May 2010; In the Shadow of the Sun, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dècalage, Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City, 2009; and Halo, Pavilion Le Corbusier, Foundation Suisse, CIUP, Paris, 2008. With generous support from: Fundación/ Colección Jumex SNCA-FONCA Conaculta g727 Gallery Neutra VDL Research House II About Neutra VDL House Neutra VDL Studio and Residences was home to Richard Neutra and his family. Built in three phases (1932, 1939, and 1966) this is the only Neutra home that is publicly owned and open to the public. The house is currently owned and managed by Cal Poly Pomona’s College of Environmental Design.