Sensu

Commissioned Statement – Site-Specific Installation, Recife, Brazil

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In response an invitation to conceive a landmark installation, the material chosen was the medium of textile architecture—a tensile structure of soaring delicacy and ambition. This 27-meter-tall, 2,000-square-meter work rises with poetic restraint on the campus of the University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil.

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Evoking the form of a sensu—the traditional Japanese folding fan—this ethereal construction becomes more than a visual gesture; it is a symbolic portrait of the social fabric of Pernambuco. As with the sensu, whose fragile ribs gain strength only when united, the diverse communities of this region derive resilience through collective cohesion.

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A dialogue between lightness and permanence, fragility and strength, the work stands as a temporary monument to the enduring power of solidarity. This site-specific installation, situated in Cidade Universitária (Recife, Pernambuco, 50740-540), is both rooted in place and open to the sky—a sculptural embrace of local identity rendered through an international vocabulary of form and material.