LUMINOUS
GROUND
ASIAN ART MUSEUM
August 24, 2023 - July 21, 2025
Not long ago, we brought the skies closer to earth by covering the interior of domes and praying halls with polychrome tiles, representing heaven looking over us; heaven made from the earth; from clay on the bed of rivers, the soil that embraced layers and layers of organic and non-organic matter that flowed in the rivers over millions and millions of years.
Now, telescopes bring the skies closer to us; but looking at the night sky, with telescope or naked eye, we are unwittingly gazing billions of years back, only assuming we are witnessing the Now. The (GOODS/ERS2 Field) image from the Hubble telescope shatters the illusion as it shows around 7,500 galaxies spanning through more than 12 billion years of cosmic history, shaking the foundations of our anthropocentric history.
Mirroring this image of the cosmos on tiles installed on the new East West Bank Art Terrace at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, The tiles that are made in a process that brings the four elements together, not only mirror the heaven on earth, materially and directionally. Working with local soil to produce hand made tiles that are shaped and fired, and then treated with an altered cyanotype technique, in which the surface is treated with potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate, where the red iron changes into blue by being exposed to the Sun; from the color of the earth to the color of the sky. The work is birthed by light.
