Featured Project: Maria Gaspar’s Unblinking Eyes (Awaiting), 2023
Maria Gaspar’s Unblinking Eyes (Awaiting), 2023, installed at the Ford Foundation Gallery’s exhibition No Justice Without Love, New York, Spring 2023; work by Sherrill Roland installed to the left, with pieces by Julie Mehretu and Faith Ringgold to the right.
Strategy, production and logistics.
In 2019, as part of the Chicago Architectural Biennial, Maria Gaspar presented Unblinking Eyes (Watching), a 26-foot by 40-foot photo-vinyl reproducing at one-to-one scale the exterior wall of the Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois. It is a work for which Gaspar has become quite well known, even though it is a work that, since its first installation, has never again been shown in public.
Installation shot of Unblinking Eyes (Watching), 2023; presented at the Chicago Architectural Biennial in 2019. The work is a 1-to-1 scale, 26 x 40 foot photo vinyl of the exterior of a portion the wall surrounding Cook County Jail, the largest single-site jail in the United States
When Inversion Art began working with Maria, one of our conversations focused on how we could extend the reach and visibility of this work. After a number of discussions and proposals, we understood that the importance of the piece was its one-to-one scale, its implication of the magnitude of the architectures of incarceration, and that to maintain the integrity of the work, that scale would need to be maintained. Out of those discussions was born the idea of a new version of the work.
Unblinking Eyes (Awaiting), 2023, uses the same composite digital image of the exterior of the Cook County Jail, but divides that image into individually-printed “cells” on panels that can be presented singly or together in various configurations. When displayed together, the cells are installed with their relative positions intact. For example, the images of the lowest segments of the wall would be installed at the floor, with higher segments installed at their relative heights. The effect is to imply the full magnitude of the jail wall without needing to reproduce it in its entirety; and in any case, Unblinking Eyes (Watching) only reproduced a segment of the more than 100-foot image Gaspar originally captured, so a further division of the image seemed in keeping with the project.
Planning image for dividing Unblinking Eyes (Watching) into cells with various different possible configurations. The configuration shown was ultimately used for No Justice Without Love.
In the winter of 2023, curator Daisy Derosiers contacted Gaspar about including Unblinking Eyes (Watching) in a show at the Ford Foundation Gallery to commemorate the work of the Art4Justice Fund (initiated by Agnes Gund). Inversion Art helped Gaspar source printers in New York City who could reproduce the large photo-vinyl, but after a few conversations with Derosiers and Ford Foundation Gallery Director Lisa Kim, it was clear that a work of that size and magnitude would unbalance a show dedicated to presenting the full community of works and projects that A4J had underwritten.
After joining Gaspar in further discussions with Derosiers and Kim, we pushed for Unblinking Eyes (Awaiting), then still in its developmental stage, and helped communicate how its variable configuration could provide the flexibility the Ford Foundation Gallery was looking for without compromising the impact of the work. We also sourced a new fine art printer in New York (Supreme Digital) who was able to produce the new prints on the Ford’s tight timeline.
Unblinking Eyes (Awaiting) debuted at the Ford Foundation on April 4, 2023, next to work by Sherrill Roland, Julie Mehretu, Faith Ringgold and many other noteworthy artists who came together as part of the A4J initiative.