sun & us (Invisible Performance)
2026, silk organza, metal fixings, cyanotype solution
Burning in the blackness of our solar system, the sun is our brightest star—a life-giver that warms, sustains, and shapes our world. Yet at roughly 93 million miles from Earth, it remains elusive, its power quiet, its paradoxical remoteness and omnipresence an alluring mystery.
Developed during the winter months, when sunlight was a scarce resource, this work emerged from artist Ruby Jean Waterhouse’s heightened awareness of the sun’s influence on her mood, perception, and bodily experience. This installation expands her practice of ‘Invisible Performance’, an approach pioneered by the artist that harnesses hidden forces to transform drawing into an environment-responsive, time-based act. In ‘sun & us’, Waterhouse positions the sun as her collaborator, inviting a renewed encounter with this celestial force and a reconsideration of our relationship with it.
Within the space, over 250 hand-cut discs of delicate silk organza are suspended from fine silver chains in a sprawling sculptural display. Employing the technique of cyanotype, a traditional photographic process in which images emerge through exposure to ultraviolet light, the sculptures have undergone a chemical treatment, transforming them into solar-receptive sites. On 19 May 2026, Waterhouse initiated the sun’s ‘Invisible Performance’ through the in-situ exposure of the sculptures. What is displayed is a record of this encounter between element and space, mapped in subtle impressions left on the surfaces of these delicate forms—traces of exchanges between light, fabric, and movement. Through this careful construction of conditions, Waterhouse generates a space in which the sun can speak directly to us—the physical documentation of its performance providing a rare visual insight into the behaviour and mood of this distant planetary form.
Selected sculptures remain in a state of live exposure throughout the exhibition, continuing to register the sun’s interaction with the space. Suspended overhead, the site-specific arrangement invites immersive participation, allowing visitors’ bodies to cast shadows and leave delicate impressions that become embedded within the developing patterns. At the close of the exhibition, the live works will be washed, halting the cyanotype process, leaving the traces of these shared encounters preserved in the fabric.
In this space, a playful tension exists between capture and escape, mirroring the elusive nature of the sun. The hanging translucent forms offer fleeting glimpses of light, bodies moving through the work, and the surrounding architecture, generating perspectives that shift and disappear, while their surfaces retain delicate yet striking vestiges of solar activity. Through the display of these marks and traces, the distant is collapsed to the immediate, the abstract to the sensory, the past to the present. Waterhouse invites an investigation of what this new level of engagement with the sun can teach us. What can be inferred from traces left behind? What knowledge can be uncovered by consciously observing the quiet power of the elements? What magic can occur when we cede control to our environment?
Presenting these ethereal markings, imbued with the sun’s own mystical sensibilities, Waterhouse frames this central star not as a mute force, but as a living, expressive presence. Part sculpture, part performance, this installation facilitates an active exchange between sun, space, and audience, inviting reflections on perception, time, and our connection to the forces that continually shape our world.
Description by Liliana Muñoz Flannery
Ruby Jean Waterhouse 