site specific installations
Artist collaborators Ong Siraphisut and Manon Wada created a temporary site specific installation in a grain silo with dimensions of 106’7″ x 19’8″ at Buffalo Riverworks for PLAY/GROUND 2022.
When envisioning Siloscope, Ong and Manon were thinking of the silo as a telescope/ microscope/ kaleidoscope and essentially as a portal to another universe.
Whispers in Glass is a site responsive installation at Elsewhere Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina.
A motion sensor activates an audio recording of a whispered poem composed by Manon Wada with found text from 16 books sourced in the Living Library.
The content of the poem responds to the room it is installed within, called the Bureau of Illumination also known as the Glass Forest.
Images of the original found text that compose the poem are engraved backwards on 3 mirrors, which is read forwards in the reflection of a perpendicular mirror.
Invisible Exit was a site responsive installation with video and audio made collaboratively by Mia Reiko Braverman and Manon Wada. It was exhibited in a stairway to an attic at Whitney Center for the Arts in Pittsfield, MA, for Rites of Passage Project.
Meditating on death, we considered its mysterious character yet its stark boundary, its speed to strike with grief, and its residue of release.
In the process of working on this installation, Manon’s father passed away suddenly. The collection of ashes was a shredded paper trail of his documents, the wood pillars from constructed furniture in his home, and the bowls were inherited.
The audio piece in this installation is layered with singing glass vessels, Mia passing through a river, and our breaths held and then exhaled.
Temporary work inSITE was created in situ by the removal of soil on a plot of land with measurements of 53′ x 13′ and 4′ into the ground. This installation responded to the natural environment and nearby roads of artist residency ComPeung in Doi Saket, Thailand.
Two pathways are parallel, yet misaligned and meet at the deepest section at the center with seats for two. The arrangement of the seating created a shared experience being at eye level in the earth with mirrored yet ultimately offset perspectives.
This installation was activated by audience interaction and pictured in the images are the founder and partner of the artist residency, Ong and Maureen Siraphisut.
At the time when this piece was completed in mid-November of 2016 the celebrations of Yi Peng and Loi Krathong were occurring, which use brightly burning candles. In the night photos, the inside perimeter of inSITE was lined with candles to cast the cavity in light and highlight an ephemeral moment of this impermanent piece.
