Preserve: Maya: detail of read gerbera daisies at the beginning of the exhibition

Scottish artist Anya Gallacio created two installations for inSITE94, one untitled piece located at Centro Escolar Agua Caliente, the other titled "Preserve: Maya/Preservación: maya" at the downtown location of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. Gallacio was drawn to the site of Agua Caliente because of its history: it was built in 1929 as a resort and casino for the rich who came there to escape and play. Having been abandoned for many years, the pool was showing signs of decay with missing tiles, cracks, and broken elements. Gallacio chose to cover these exposed areas with gold foil, referencing and revealing a sense of the pool's gilded past.

At MCASD, Gallacio worked with the theme of natural transformation. The artist chose a space viewable from both inside the Museum and from the bookstore, and layered red gerbera daisies between two panes of glass to create a botanical stained glass that was inserted as a window space. Over the course of the exhibition the flowers decomposed, fading to grey and revealing their own life cycle. --inSITE94

• 1994

• Gallacio, Anya, 1963-

• InSITE94

This image is a scan of a 35mm color slide from the InSite Archive (MSS 707, Box 309, Folder 04, Item 120)

Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego

flowers (plants); Gerbera; plate glass; wood (plant material)

• InSITE94

• Mexican-American border region

• Installations (visual works)
• Sculpture (visual work)

• Death
• Decomposition
• Red (color)
• Time

• image

Shared Shelf: 16715401

Online finding aid

• inSite Archive

Sculpture and Installations

[Title, Date]. InSite Archive. MSS 707. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.

Unknown (US)

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Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego, La Jolla, 92093-0175 (https://lib.ucsd.edu/sca)

2020-10-27