Forbidden City: the incarceration of desire
The series of four ground-based installations entitled Forbidden City represent a synthesis of a search for a deeper understanding of the relationship of materiality to architecture. They are inspired by an essay of the same title in the Japan/ China Journals of Nikos Kazantzakis. The pigmented inscriptions of Forbidden City investigate a geography of estrangement through juxtaposition, overlapping and layering of a found landscape. They interpret a mythology where prescribed rituals and architecture are invoked to sustain the body of an emperor in accord with the greater body of a country. In the encounter with the found conditions of the site they define and map out a new discrete set of social relations.