Armando D. Cosmos
b. 1988, United Kingdom
The tapestries of Armando D. Cosmos (b. 1988, lives in Manchester) works in the tradition of narrative weaving to create textile collages composed from layered and manipulated found images, iconography and historical printed matter. Destabilising the canon of explanatory imagery set out in scientific textbooks, Cosmos’ work employs a sci-fi inflected visual language to imagine diagrams of the future: scenes in which technologies both new and ancient unfold amid environments of human-induced cataclysm.
Cosmos seeks to undermine the sciences’ claims to objectivity and rationalism; a visual and material process of what he calls ‘deobjectivisation.’ Scientific graphics, for Cosmos, are not vessels for accurate depictions of hard fact or reality, but rather demonstrations of subjective beliefs and theories: a record, above all, of human understanding. In his works, contemporary environmental issues are examined through an imagined retrospective lens, picturing biological and physical processes in vivid, saturated detail. Arguing for a conscious acceptance of the biases and inconsistencies inherent to scientific and historical epistemology, Cosmos’ tapestries exist as ruminations on the relationships between the mediums of art, science and technology, and the visual representation of knowledge.
Recent exhibitions include Underland Chapter 4: THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM at Radius, Centre for Contemporary Art and Ecology, Delft, the Netherlands (2022); Non-profit at all Cost, NEST, The Hague, the Netherlands (2022); Our Silver City, 2094, Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2022); Plant Fever - Towards a Phyto-centred Design at Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich, Grand Hornu, Belgium, and Kunstgewerbemuseum, Dresden (touring, 2020-22); and shows at Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven and Looiersgracht 60, Amsterdam.