HIMALAYA

Himalaya is a site-specific installation created and developed for MAO Museum of Oriental Art in Turin, as part of the museum’s ongoing Contemporary Declinations programme, a series of long-term artist residencies and commissions that invites contemporary artists to enter into dialogue with the museum’s permanent collection.

A curtain of amber beads suspends itself across a threshold, catching the light and turning an ordinary act of passage into something quietly ceremonial. The colour is deliberate: the deep, resinous amber of the beads mirrors the gilded surfaces of Tibetan temples, where light is not merely reflected but offered. Strung bead by bead, the work distils that tradition into something almost domestic, a luminous boundary between one room and the next, and between the present moment and something much older.

The work was realised in collaboration with WonderGlass, whose long creative partnership with MAO has made possible some of the museum’s most ambitious recent commissions, the highlights being collaborations with Patrick Tuttofuoco and Francesco Simeti.

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Photography by Giorgio Perottino⁠