I saw all the mirrors

September 30, 2023 to March 3, 2024

A spatial poem by Maria Barnas based on The Aleph; a 1945 story written by Argentine writer and Nobel laureate Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986).

The story The Aleph, written by Argentine writer and Nobel laureate Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), is about a man who, in the house of a writer friend, sees a wondrous sphere: the Aleph, a small, floating sphere no more than three centimeters in diameter in which the entire cosmos is condensed.

Maria Barnas: "To my surprise, I read that Borges, who must have sought the farthest reaches of the universe together to depict the inexhaustibility of the Aleph, also thought of Alkmaar: "I saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly." When you The Aleph reads in the city of Alkmaar shows that everyone is in someone else's corner." 

Installation I saw all the mirrors turns outward with a spatial intervention the infinite (closed) reflection of the globe between two mirrors. The observations of the man who saw the whole world in the Aleph are hurled into the cosmos through two beamers (the mirrors) aimed at a mirror sphere (the earth). In doing so, the artist aims at a liberation from language, which swirls fragmentarily in space. A liberation from the idea that it is desirable to survey the world from a particular perspective. A liberation of the narrator's perspective in an answer from Barnas to Borges, across time and space.

The work I saw all the mirrors was commissioned by Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar based on an idea by Maria Barnas.