At the centre of Antonio Vega Macotela's practice is a concern with the concepts of time, value, and work. Macotela is known for working with specific communities over a given period of time, during which the artist asks his collaborators to create a work of art in exchange for favours or errands.
Read MoreFor his massive tapestries at Taipei Biennial 2020, Antonio Vega Macotela drew inspiration from the poem Incendio by Mexican poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. The works depict burning landscapes releasing heavy smoke. But what is the smoke signal about? Using a technique called 'steganography' commonly employed by hackers and activists to hide secret information, the artist wove the codes of a leaked confidential list denouncing tax evaders into the meshes of the work.
The tapestries then gain a double status. On the one hand, they are a meticulously woven image depicting a landscape. On the other hand, they are an archive, listing the citizens whose capital flows through borders and escapes the tax system put in place in the boundaries of their nation states.
Courtesy Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Ocula