Make Area Gray Again (Shrine)
An interactive installation that transforms salvaged materials into a temporary house of worship, inviting visitors into a quiet space of ritual, offering, and attention.
June 25, 2025
installationsculpture
Make Area Gray Again (Shrine) was created in response to the National Endowment for the Arts rescinding a $50,000 grant from Gray Area, citing a shift toward “empowering houses of worship to better serve their communities.” Rather than addressing this decision symbolically, the work takes it literally—recasting Gray Area itself as a house of worship.
The installation is constructed entirely from upcycled and discarded materials: broken electronics, paper bags, chopsticks, and salvaged LEDs, assembled into shrine-like forms that reference devotional architecture without reproducing it directly. Embedded light and sound behaviors respond to visitor presence and gesture, rewarding sustained attention rather than spectacle. Interaction unfolds slowly—encouraging offering, pause, and reflection as valid modes of participation.
A central stained-glass–inspired mirror projection responds to the viewer’s gaze, tracking the participant’s eye and positioning it at the center of each illuminated panel. In doing so, the work implicates the visitor within the structure of worship itself—blurring boundaries between observer, congregant, and object of reverence.
By elevating trash into ritual material and institutional language into physical form, Make Area Gray Again (Shrine) asks how power, funding, and belief are materially expressed—and whether spaces devoted to art, like spaces devoted to faith, are ultimately sustained by collective attention and care.
The installation is constructed entirely from upcycled and discarded materials: broken electronics, paper bags, chopsticks, and salvaged LEDs, assembled into shrine-like forms that reference devotional architecture without reproducing it directly. Embedded light and sound behaviors respond to visitor presence and gesture, rewarding sustained attention rather than spectacle. Interaction unfolds slowly—encouraging offering, pause, and reflection as valid modes of participation.
A central stained-glass–inspired mirror projection responds to the viewer’s gaze, tracking the participant’s eye and positioning it at the center of each illuminated panel. In doing so, the work implicates the visitor within the structure of worship itself—blurring boundaries between observer, congregant, and object of reverence.
By elevating trash into ritual material and institutional language into physical form, Make Area Gray Again (Shrine) asks how power, funding, and belief are materially expressed—and whether spaces devoted to art, like spaces devoted to faith, are ultimately sustained by collective attention and care.