Visitors to the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery will experience art on a monumental scale—while lying on a printed-textile floor. The brainchild of multimedia artist Janet Echelman, “1.8 Renwick” examines the effect of changing light and wind movement on a floating, volumetric form made of knotted and braided fiber and suspended from the ceiling of the Rubenstein Grand Salon.
On view April 3 to August 14, 2022, this undulating installation was inspired by data recorded during a 2011 earthquake and tsunami in the Pacific—a geological event so powerful it shifted the Earth on its axis and shortened that day by 1.8 millionths of a second. Says Echelman, “The work is an exploration of our interdependencies with these larger systems and cycles of time.” americanart.si.edu
