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28 x 28 x 48 in,
2023
Temple of the Eternal Fire explores the devotion to unreachable origins and ‘authenticity’ in a space of contemporary mediation, through a frame of Thirdness. It entangles an electric fireplace–a contemporary simulacra–with the 17th century Zoroastrian temple, Ateşgah of Baku, in Azerbaijan. The temple is home to the ‘eternal fire’ phenomenon (natural gas vents beneath the earth that fuel perpetually burning fires). In my structure, a single brick cast with dirt collected from the site assimilates the primordial with the simulated, collapsing the real and unreal into a third dimension: a reality where fire, the Zoroastrian symbol of purity and truth, is a mechanically induced projection, haunted by the memory of its primordial ancestor.