sheer[mir]ror
multi-phase installation
with Madi Vander Ark
[at Boston University]
January 2020
This first iteration is a 20’ x 8’ (6x2.5m) structure of PVC piping, sheer grey fabric, canvas ‘black-out’ fabric, safety pins, chicken wire, papier mâché, decaying flora from the Charles River, recycled wooden boards, construction spray paint, LED lights and a handmade one-way mirror.
Viewers can enter the installation either through one of two ways.
The first is through the far end of the sheer fabric, which is a maze toward the center. There are two paths to the center, and one is a dead-end.
The second way is through the black-out canvas tent, via slits on its sides. A mound bursts out on either end of the tent. From the exterior, it seems the mound is a complete form, covered by a quarantine tent. However, it is completely hollow and viewers are able to wander inside the structure freely.
Inside the tent, the interior construction of the mounds are exposed for view. The mound’s inner surface is sanded/moulded to mimic caves or wasp-nests, and painted gold. Diffused LED lights are installed under sheer paper.
The mound has many holes to view either in or out of. A one-way mirror separates the interior/exteior viewers, so that one inside the tent may see others outside of the tent, but one outside the tent will only see a mirror reflection of themselves peering, and the honey gold interior of the mound.
(The interior view was impossible to document.)
Spray painted glyphs adorn the tent, using construction spray paint, borrowing language from symbols used during road-work construction. Pink construction spray designates an unknown structure hidden beneath a surface, while orange is particular to the area in which it is used, and decipherable.
The first is through the far end of the sheer fabric, which is a maze toward the center. There are two paths to the center, and one is a dead-end.
The second way is through the black-out canvas tent, via slits on its sides. A mound bursts out on either end of the tent. From the exterior, it seems the mound is a complete form, covered by a quarantine tent. However, it is completely hollow and viewers are able to wander inside the structure freely.
Inside the tent, the interior construction of the mounds are exposed for view. The mound’s inner surface is sanded/moulded to mimic caves or wasp-nests, and painted gold. Diffused LED lights are installed under sheer paper.
The mound has many holes to view either in or out of. A one-way mirror separates the interior/exteior viewers, so that one inside the tent may see others outside of the tent, but one outside the tent will only see a mirror reflection of themselves peering, and the honey gold interior of the mound.
(The interior view was impossible to document.)
Spray painted glyphs adorn the tent, using construction spray paint, borrowing language from symbols used during road-work construction. Pink construction spray designates an unknown structure hidden beneath a surface, while orange is particular to the area in which it is used, and decipherable.
February 2020
The second iteration of ‘sheer[mir]ror’ is a 4’ x 8’ (1.25x2.5m) structure of PVC piping, sheer grey fabric, construction spray paint, with projection. It only uses materials from the first iteration, including the projection itself, which is documentation of Madi traversing the first installation.
Viewers can enter the installation on either end through slits in the fabric.
The two projectors are oriented so that third person footage illuminates one half of the structure, while second person footage illumaintes the other half from the oppsoite side of the space.
Madi then enters the structure, and contends with two projections of her body traversing the same materials in a different orientation from the first installation. While inside, viewers witness Madi contending with the physical ephemera of the first installation, as well the documented ephemera via projection.
In certain moments of performance, not only do Madi’s physical and projected line up, but the spray painted marks on the fabric in the video projections line up with the ephemeral spray painted marks of the fabric present in the installation.
Unfortunately, during the closure at Boston University at onset of COVID-19, the materials from this project were not able to be retrieved from this last installation site. They were subsequently stolen before legal access into the studio building was granted again. So, this second iteration was sadly the last.
RIP :(
Sadly, this project will not be seeing its 3rd - 6th iteration.
RIP <33