Garden of Secrets
Fountain, paint, paper, wood, text/poem, beeswax; 35´ L x 50´ W x 12´ H
Garden of Secrets unfolds as a sanctuary of language, thought, and poetic resonance. Created for the University Art Museum, Long Beach, the installation responds both to the architectural intimacy of the museum—nestled within the library—and to the broader currents of intellectual life across the University.
At the heart of the space, a fountain rests within a delicate house of translucent paper. The walls and ceiling are alive with three thousand beeswax-coated paper butterflies, each cut from replicas of Persian Sufi poetry books. These fluttering wings, inscribed with poetry, become carriers of thought, dialogue, and the communion of ideas, echoing the wisdom contained within the very books and the museum-library context that houses them.
The installation is a metaphorical garden where knowledge takes flight, where language and text inspire transcendence. Painted in melted beeswax on the four walls of the paper house, the following lines guide the viewer along this path of discovery:
“The house is left empty, save for the Truth,
For in a moment the world has passed away;
Then you, rid of self, fly upwards
And are united to the Beloved.
Union is yours when this dream-world
Fades and dies away.”
— This World A Mirage, Mahmud Shabistari
In Garden of Secrets, every element—the fountain, the paper house, the beeswax butterflies—becomes a vessel for contemplation, a poetic allegory for the pursuit of knowledge and the mystical ascent of understanding.