Artist:
Damián Ortega (born 1967 in Mexico City, Mexico; lives and works in Mexico City and Berlin, Germany).

Materials:
Corn tortillas; dimensions variable.

Description:
“An ad hoc quasi-modernist sculpture, Tortillas Construction Module is made from corn, the archetypal Mesoamerican staple. In a move that reflects his fascination with the ways in which things are constructed, Damián Ortega has stipulated that the work’s components may be rearranged from exhibition to exhibition. The result is an ever-evolving expression of the grid that also functions as an act of dissent, inviting the viewer to think about the possibility of making things using local knowledge and materials, and to consider larger geopolitical issues by looking beyond the formal language of abstraction.”
—”Damián Ortega: Tortillas Construction Module,” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

“For [Tortillas] Construction Module (1998), Ortega cut slots into the edges of tortillas and fitted them together into what reads as a perishable scale model of modernist apartments. That the work will eventually disintegrate yields a strong yet playful tension between fragility and longevity.”
—Anne Lawrence Guyon, review of “Damián Ortega,” Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Art in America, January 15, 2010.