an installation by Eden Van Saun
made possible with the support of:
USD Humanities Center and Keck Fellowship
ASG Academic Research Grant
As the culmination of a sustained, year-long research project as a Keck Fellow, my installation "Cosmic Mirrors" was on view at the USD campus during April and May of 2023. The exhibition piece worked in conjunction with the other aspects of my formal Keck research project, “Decolonizing the Clock: Non-Western Time Concepts in Central American Art and Literature.” The two mirrored discs, facing one another, allowed the viewer to situate themselves in an ‘in-between,’ experiencing other(ed) forms of time, mathematics, and space. In seeking to make visible other, non-Western spaces and temporalities, this piece made accessible a new way of perceiving space and time. Inspired by pre-contact Mayan pyrite mirrors, this piece allowed the viewer to ‘access’ a way of seeing that more closely approximates how the indigenous Maya viewed interdimensionality, simultaneity, and even time itself. The original handheld mirrors were seen by the Maya as ‘portals’ into other-worlds, dimensions, and realities. They displayed a high level of mathematical precision, approximating what Western Mathematics calls today “voronoi diagrams.”
This immersive piece therefore sought to defamiliarize a familiar site– both the USD campus as well as the previous significance of the ‘leftover’ plinth– and offered the experience of a different form of perception, one easily available without a technical understanding of the greater research project. Indeed, one of my goals through my Keck Fellowship is to make my project more visible and accessible to a wider audience, moving beyond discipline and a purely academic setting to offer a lived practice of my research concepts. This piece in particular offers a mode of experiencing this difference, whether that may be by experiencing a brief change in visual perception or a lasting curiosity.
More than anything, this project was a community undertaking. Many minds, hands, and hearts made this exhibit possible.
Special thanks to:
Dr. Julia Medina, an unending source of inspiration, and for believing in me both as a student and as a creator
Slaten Van Saun, for bringing my ideas and visions into the real world.
Additional thanks to:
Pete Watson, Cathy Van Saun, and Auckland Van Saun for all around installation-day support.
Julia Kanamine-Surrick and Lam Ta, for humoring me with a ridiculous geometry project in 2021 and for making the initial (painstaking) diagram that became the catalyst for this piece.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss, for the 2021 Geometry class, and for always toeing the line between math and art.
Avery Barrett and Jameson Morrin, for unending moral support.
Eric Winges, for finding the initial intersections (https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse497/05wi/winges.html)
Among many, many others.
