Reading Reflections and/or Time Sensitive Hopscotch

With this work, Moon explores themes of reflection and self-empowerment through a human-scale intervention jutting out from MOCA’s plaza. The materiality of the sculpture, primarily fabricated from dichroic glass, creates a prismatic light effect where the viewer can simultaneously look through and see themselves reflected in the oil-slick surface. Experienced from different angles, light conditions, and dimensions, the work draws viewers into their own image, while intricate shadows and atmospheric color fog alter perception.

Etched upon the large slab pitched at a steep angle leading up from the viewer’s feet is a drawing by Moon. Her signature writhing line and enigmatic symbolism, arrows, and flow lines at first seem to indicate an encrypted set of dance instructions. Sunlight casts shadows from the drawing onto the ground, naturally projecting and amplifying it. In fact, the shadows from the drawing are intended to create an intricate and mysterious game of hop-scotch for visitors to engage with. Interspersed in the Moon’s elegant calligraphic language are pieces of text, both derived from and a product of the line-work. The text suggests rules, challenges, and directions for what to do next. Questions and prompts result in highly personal outcomes, such as “How old were you when you had your first kiss?” Viewers respond by moving to the next point and so on, creating an idiosyncratic but completely authentic physical map of their life experiences.

Both engaged in a kind of sensory-deprivation exercise, light-and-space-movement phenomena, and meditation, Reading Reflections is a powerful participatory artwork that playfully nudges catharsis, self-confrontation, and reflexivity.

-Amanda Sanfilippo Long