A founding member of the Mexican contemporary art scene, Terrazas came to prominence as a young architect when he was selected as the co-designer of the logo and prevalent design elements for the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. The logo, which was traced in concentric circles, was inspired by Huichol artisan techniques from Jalisco, Durango, and Nayarit. It set a precedent for the geometric forms that have since come to define the artist’s visual language.

Terrazas began experimenting with the formal relationships of geometric elements through drawings. These investigations, combined with the appropriation of elements from Mexican folk art, have resulted in a unique language that navigates both contemporary art and craft traditions. For Terrazas, the application of craft is an essential ontological process, which he deems particularly poignant for the 21st century. Cosmos is one of several series Terrazas has been working on since the early seventies under a broader umbrella he refers to as ‘possibilities of a structure’, expressing a clear interest in performing a permanent inquiry into the relationship between art and life. Various times coexist in Eduardo Terrazas’s Cosmos: westernised and non-westernised time; fast and slow time; the time of the relationship with the environment, and the time of the relationship with oneself. From this series onwards, Terrazas established in his work and thought an essential connection with artisanal production and geometry as a universal language.

In the late sixties, Terrazas met Huichol craftsman Santos Motoapohua de la Torre de Santiago, with whom he began a collaborative relationship which continues to this day. Through this interaction Terrazas observed and learned how to apply the technique used by the Huichol to capture scenes related to gods and symbols from their worldview, with a sacred geometry that emerges from meditative states or trances. In this technique, threads of yarn are meticulously applied on wooden boards or frames coated with Campeche wax, forming sections of colour and creating scenes that emerge in different shades depending on how the strands are placed. This encounter is attended back and forth by creative thinking that evade folklorism.

The Huichol yarn technique, in which coloured yarn is arranged on wax-covered boards, has been adopted by Terrazas not only for its aesthetic properties, but also due its laborious demands, which require absorption in the act, and therefore meditation within the process. The present work can be installed in various ways hinting to the recurring idea of endless combinations that such structures and geometry can bring about. It was recently part of the artist’s retrospective at the Eco Museum designed by Mathias Goeritz in Mexico City.


1 Paola Santoscoy Cosmos Eduardo Terrazas June 2019