Mashrabiya

Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto
2021

A mashrabiya is an architectural element characteristic of traditional Islamic architecture. It is a type of projecting, oriel window enclosed with wooden latticework, and they are typically located on the upper floors of a building. These structures capture and passively cool the air by streaming it into the building also used as screens, separating rooms inside the house, allowing for a partial view outward, but restricting the view inward.

At MOCA Toronto, the intervention on the museum’s exterior wall form an enclave extending into the projecting oriel window on the facade of the building. The work recalls an observation deck, one that visitors are invited to enter. As an enclosed space, it projects through the museum’s first-floor windows and becomes both a space from which to look out. As viewers engage with the installation from either outside or inside the museum’s walls, some will become the observers, some the observed, but they cannot be both at once. The public becomes integral to the play of visibility and obscurity, and the dynamics of power associated with viewing especially within the space of the museum.

Painted aluminum
Ext: 350x233x120cm - Int: 233x78x97cm Photography: Toni Hafkenscheid