The MITLA AFRICA X-Chair by Mexican artist Sabino Guisu brings together diverse cultural references through a contemporary sculptural language. Inspired by the timeless typology of the interlocking X-chair, encountered during the artist's travels through Africa and also prevalent in Mexico’s design typologies, the piece merges this universal form with the geometric vocabulary of Mitla, the renowned Zapotec archaeological site in Oaxaca.
Crafted from richly figured parota wood, the chair reinterprets the iconic stepped-fret (greca escalonada) motif as an architectural element, lending the piece both rhythm and structure. Balancing sculpture and function, the MITLA X-Chair reflects Guisu's ongoing dialogue between ancestral knowledge, architecture, travel, and contemporary design—creating an object that feels at once ancient and distinctly of the present.
Sabino Guisu (b. 1986, Juchitán, Oaxaca) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is deeply rooted in Zapotec heritage and Indigenous cosmology. Working across painting, music, and contemporary art, he explores themes of cultural memory, transformation, social justice, and ecology. Drawing on ancestral knowledge, mythology, and the rich symbolism of Oaxaca, Guisu reinterprets traditional narratives through a contemporary lens, creating works that bridge past and present while activating new dialogues around identity, ritual, and the sacred.
