Golden Gateway
Fabric, Scaffolding, Lights; 25’H x 21’W x 10’D; Patricia’s Green, Hayes Valley, San Francisco, CA
Golden Gateway was a temporary, site-specific installation in Patricia’s Green, Hayes Valley, transforming the neighborhood with a shimmering, luminous portal. Constructed from scaffolding and draped with roughly 800 golden fabric squares—each 17″ x 17″ and suspended on steel cables—the structure resembled a modern architectural prayer flag, softly shifting in the wind. At night, internal illumination rendered the installation radiant, creating a warm and welcoming threshold for visitors.
On the surface, Golden Gateway nods to California’s gold history, linking itself conceptually to icons like the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park. Yet the work’s deeper ambition was philosophical: a meditation on time, presence, and liminality. As a gateway, it exists neither fully in the past nor the future, but in an infinite succession of “now” moments, a passage that asks viewers to reconsider their experience of space and time.
The installation also carries metaphorical resonance with the human form. Scaffolding acts as a skeleton, the archway echoes a ribcage, and the fabric becomes skin, both temporal and delicate. The structure invites reflection on the interplay between permanence and change, essence and surface, as well as the individual and the community. Golden Gatewayultimately celebrated Hayes Valley’s revitalization, creating a magical, in-between space that honored collective dreams, hope, and new beginnings.