Terra Cognita Suis
November 15th, 2024 - February 26th, 2025
In Terra Cognita Suis, the artist assumes a physically strenuous position—balancing upside down while performing a salute. This act, at once disciplined and precarious, engages with themes of national identity, power, and the instability of inherited political structures. By inverting both the body and the gesture, the work interrogates the tension between allegiance and disorientation, authority and collapse.
The performance is taking place between November 15, 2024, and February 26, 2025, mirroring the exact dates of the Berlin Conference 140 years prior. By situating the work within this anniversary, the artist underscores a refusal to accept the nation-states created through colonial partitioning and questions their continued legitimacy. The chosen timeframe reinforces the ways in which these imposed borders remain entrenched—not just politically, but through the ongoing mental and physical labor required to uphold them. The piece foregrounds how these structures persist through acts of maintenance, both physically, through the protection of borders with militaristic acts, and conceptually, through the mental maintenance performed by the subaltern to legitimise these inherently abstract concepts.
Central to the performance is the symbolism of the upside-down flag, recognised as a signal of distress. Within this context, saluting an inverted flag complicates the notion of loyalty, questioning the legitimacy of imposed national frameworks and the mechanisms through which they are upheld. This tension is further underscored by the physical demands of the pose, which requires both control and endurance whilst simultaneously teetering on the edge of failure.
The work draws conceptual inspiration from Joaquín Torres-García’s América Invertida (1943), in which the South American continent is depicted upside down. Torres-García’s reversal challenged Eurocentric cartographic traditions and hierarchies, proposing an alternative perspective on geography and power. Terra Cognita Suis similarly engages in a process of inversion, using the body itself as a site of contestation, where established symbols are reconfigured to reveal their inherent contradictions.
By positioning the salute within a context of physical instability, the performance draws attention to the fragility of these inherited political structures. Through this destabilization of familiar nationalistic gestures, Terra Cognita Suis explores the embodied contradictions of political identity. The work reflects on the ways in which power is visually and physically reinforced, while also considering the potential for rupture, resistance, and reorientation within these established frameworks.