"Offsides"
Nir Altman
September 19 – October 31, 2025.
"Curtis Talwst Santiago works across painting, sculpture, diorama, sound, and performance to interrogate systems of control — historical, spatial, spiritual — and the spaces where those systems break. His practice is rooted in ancestral research, diasporic memory, speculative history, and metaphysical geometry. But it is also grounded in urgency: Who gets to move? Who defines the field? What happens when the rules are broken — or never meant for you to begin with?
In Offsides, Santiago uses the language of football — specifically the rule of “offside” — as a structural metaphor for positional illegitimacy: social, political, moral, and spiritual. The offside rule is not visible on the pitch. Until recently it was imaginary and conditional. But now is enforced through the use of AI. So too are many of the boundaries that define who is permitted to speak, to be seen, to act, or to arrive."
