Santiago Sahli, a designer and visual artist, centers his practice on contemporary ceramics as a vehicle for investigating the narrative capacity of material. His work explores the relationships between form, time, and deterioration, approaching clay not only as a constructive medium but also as a parallel to the geological processes from which the material originates.

From a design-based, project-oriented perspective, Sahli develops works built through stratification: wild clays, slips, rocks, and glazes that are layered, deformed, and transformed through successive processes of deterioration.

These layers and accumulations, rather than concealing the process, reveal it through erosion and flaking surfaces, challenging traditional notions of restoration and proposing deterioration as a constitutive element of the work—and ultimately, as a form of renewal.

At the intersection of design, visual art, and ceramic practice, the object becomes an open and non-final system. Through this approach, Sahli investigates material memory, atemporality, and the possibility for the work to remain in a constant state of becoming, much like a fragment of sedimentary rock—or like human drifts, in which deterioration is also part of its identity and development.

"Santiago Sahli’s artistic practice uses contemporary ceramics as a field of inquiry into material agency, time, and transformation. His work is grounded in an interest in how matter carries memory, treating clay not as a neutral medium but as a substance shaped by geological time, pressure, and erosion. Through ceramic processes, Sahli draws parallels between artistic intervention and sedimentary formation, positioning the object as a site where narrative emerges through material change.

Working from a design-based methodology, Sahli constructs his pieces through successive layers of clay bodies, slips, rocks, and glazes. These strata undergo multiple firings and deliberate acts of disruption that introduce cracking, erosion, and surface instability.

Rather than resolving the object into a finished state, the work foregrounds these transformations, challenging conventional ideas of completion, durability, and restoration.

Situated between design, visual art, and ceramic practice, Sahli’s work approaches the object as an open system—one that remains in flux rather than fixed. Through this lens, he investigates material memory and atemporality, allowing each piece to exist in a state of ongoing becoming, akin to the slow and unresolved processes of sedimentary geology."