A Bright Stage
A Bright Stage, 2018
Wall paint, Linen, silk, pigment, inkjet print, 9 channel digital animation
Commissioned for Wilsey Court, a publicly accessible atrium in the center of the de Young Museum, San Francisco. An enveloping collage work, including 27 pieces on linen that combine painting and patterns printed on embroidered silk, and a 9 channel animation, composed on saturated color walls. A Bright Stage metaphorically transformed Wilsey Court into a grove of banyan trees. touching on the banyan’s role as a sacred space for people of diverse faiths, and a symbol of India’s fight against colonial power. Invoking the banyan's form, ecology and political history, the installation accentuates the atrium’s physical qualities and its role as a social gathering space The work highlights the recent amplification of public voices carrying histories of colonialism and feminism. Printed and painted images evoke these associations, drawing from collective and individual gestures of action against recent violations of human and civil rights.