In his exhibition Interstitial Volume, Seattle-based artist Henry Jackson-Spieker presented a series of installations that uniquely integrated themselves into the studio’s architecture. This sequence of works explored visitors’ physical and philosophical perceptions of space, inquiring how individualizing factors such as race, cultural upbringing, history, and education can impact the way we understand and move through the world. By connecting these themes of power and perception, Jackon-Spieker creates works that induce a somatic response, a physical uneasiness or unbalancing. These concepts were materialized through three site-specific sculptural installations that trisected MadArt Studio, modifying how viewers navigate and engage with their physical environment. 

Interstitial Volume was an extension of Jackson-Spieker’s interest and research into how our eyes process data provided by light to interpret our surroundings. He aimed to push the limits of this research by incorporating applied light, colored thread, and monofilament within the studio’s architecture to create liminal spaces that were visually and somatically disorientating. In one instance, he activated an area that is otherwise physically inaccessible to the viewer, building into the ceiling’s interior light wells to create an illusory void that visually distorted the physical boundaries of the space. The other two installations used strategically positioned reflective and patterned materials, which relied more directly on a body’s actual presence amid the work to demarcate the shifting positive and negative volumes. These works emphasized the artist’s conceptual explorations by intentionally steering the viewer through transitional interstices that required an acute awareness of the body in relation to the sculptural forms.

Through Interstitial Volume, Jackson-Spieker created visual blind spots and distortions that he hoped acted as metaphor for the things we don’t see or question within our everyday surroundings. This engaged viewers by forcing them to confront how they moved through and utilized the environment, indirectly posing the question: For what and whom is this space intended? Centered around belonging, these questions illuminated how the act of altering movement through the studio could in turn encourage new forms of engagement, discovery, and self-reflection from the community.