Astrofengaiá

Commissioned for the Getty Center's
25th Anniversary Celebration

Astrofengaiá is a creative meditation on cosmologic circularity. Designed to embellish the beauty of our solar system's resident star, it is a home-spun shrine to light. Lovingly made from upcycled and reclaimed materials, glistening surfaces create an enclosed meditative space. Pillows invite participants to relax and listen through headphones to a custom soundscape crafted from NASA archives, electronica, binaural beats, and more.

The artwork interacts spectacularly with people and with sunlight. Geometric shadows grow and contract with our sun’s daily trek across the sky. Reflective walls act as a giant lens, creating undulating light patterns that morph across the ground. Wind ignites dancing shapes as reflective cladding comes alive with motion and color. People's reflections glide across semi-transparent, mirror-like surfaces. Faces merge with foreground and background, like a hall of mirrors. Deeply engaging for adults and children alike, Astrofengaiá merges museum-like beauty with child-like wonder.

Thematically, Astrofengaiá focuses on interconnectedness, reaching back to ancient meditations while fostering modern recognition of our star’s communal membership in an ever-expanding stellar cosmos. Like our star, though each of us is one among billions, human actions reverberate. The artwork’s transmutation of refuse into a glistening meditative space subtly seeds linkages between social responsibility and personal wellbeing.

The artwork's name is a play on words, a contraction of the Greek words for starlight (Astrofengiá) and Mother of All Life (Gaia).

Materials: reclaimed trampoline frames, abandoned-TV lenses, polycarbonate, mylar window film, sound, electronics