The piece titled Nudo Gordiano, Es Más Fácil Cortarlo que Desatarlo (Gordian Knot, it’s Easier to Cut it than to Untie it, 2011), moreover, makes reference to the classic myth of the Gordian Knot. In this large installation the artist hangs a machete behind a large yellow knot to critique violence as a way to approach problems that are “hard to solve.” According to the exhibition curator, Ernesto Calvo: “[the show] Effectos Cruzados . . . is not intended to evoke ethnic positions or determined political postures, but rather to provoke a reflection over the contradictions or ambiguities of said positions.” In this sense, the knots, like so many of Monterroso’s works, underline the tensions produced from the continuous struggle to reconcile the social and the intimate, the cultural and the political, the contemporaneous and the ancestral. Such interconnections problematically inform the artist’s individual and collective identity, her simultaneously local and global position.

The myth of the Gordian Knot
Gordium was the capitol of the Turkish Kingdom of Phrygia. The legend tells the story of a time when the people of Phrygia were once without a king. In this time of uncertainty the oracle at Telmissus predicted that the next man to come driving an ox-chariot was to be their new king. That man happened to be a peasant by the name of Gordias, who was appointed king right away. In gratitude his son, Midas, dedicated the ox-chariot to the god Sabazios by tying it by the shaft with an intricate knot. The ox-chariot remained tied in place because of the complicated knot until Alexander de Great arrived in the 4th century BCE. Alexander the Great, having tried several times to undo the knot, impatiently cuts through it. For the full myth see Lynn. E. Roller, “Midas and the Gordian Knot,” Classical Antiquity 3, no. 2 (October 1984), pp. 256–71.

Taken from Sara Gazon’s essay Sandra Monterroso: Cultural Subversions in Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas Volume 8, Issue 1 (2015)