The starting point of each curtain project is geometric abstraction, expanding the formal into the social, drawing toward space, and the concrete towards the soft. The curtains are temporary and permeable architecture, they are interactive with the public and with space, always in movement, always open to receive information and share it. Each curtain is literally and metaphorically a surface where different knowledge meets, dialogue, and collide, creating something new that both sides (the artist and his collaborators) could not have achieved on their own.

The project at OSMOS Station in Stamford NY consists in producing and exhibiting approximately 12 curtains based on quilting techniques and tradition, learned and guided by Danielle Tucker, a local quilt maker who comes from a family of quilters. The idea of working with quilting techniques comes from the intention – which crosses most of Mujica’s textile projects – of studying and incorporating local knowledge. As the North East of the United States has a rich quilt history the project set itself the task to expand its possibilities, as textile pieces that interact with space and the environment experimentally, in this case in dialogue with a traditional barn transformed into a studio/exhibition space, and, hopefully with the surrounding landscape too.

El Cóndor Pasa is a Peruvian song by composer Daniel Alomía Robles, written in 1913 and based on traditional Andean Music. The song is well known internationally for the 1970s version recorded by Simon & Garfunkel, which included English lyrics. This reinterpretation, migration, and expansion of the song present a parallel for Mujica, a Chilean artist who migrated to New York 23 years ago. The Andean Cóndor is the largest bird in the world and is occasionally seen flying around and over the Andes Mountains, through Ecuador, Bolivia, Perú, and Chile, a region, which also has a strong and ancestral textile history. 

The production of quilts/curtains, and exhibition at OSMOS Station, in the artists’ words introduces an impossible situation: “I can imagine a Condor flying over the Catskills, observing and maybe even trying to learn from Quilt traditions”.