Architecture in the Dark seeks to explore the forgotten qualities of space. The baby – snail brings in focus the bodily identification with the environmental experience, an awareness that may be a conduct to new paths of psychological discovery.
This canvas seeks to explore the heterotopic conditions of space and architecture in relation to our vision or the lack thereof.
Heterotopia is a concept elaborated by philosopher Michel Foucault to describe certain cultural, institutional, and discursive spaces that are somehow ‘other’: disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory, or transforming. Heterotopias are worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting what is outside. Foucault provides examples: ships, cemeteries, bars, brothels, prisons, gardens of antiquity, fairs, Muslim baths and many more.
While focusing upon the physical and psychological analogy between sight and spatial perception, this canvas wants to serve as a productive means to find the “other place” by approaching architecture through the dark.
Shaharee Vyaas 