After several years in production and numerous COVID-related delays,साँस {Saans} eyes of the skin سانس ({Saans}), the 2020 Rakow Commission by Boston-based Indian artist Anjali Srinivasan, is now on display in the Museum’s Contemporary Art + Design Galleries.

“This piece is a six-feet-tall, four-feet-wide wall of mirrored glass that looks like it’s been smashed into tiny pieces,” says Susie J. Silbert, Curator of Postwar and Contemporary Glass at The Corning Museum of Glass. “But, as you look at it, it subtly starts to breathe as if it has noticed your presence. And because it’s made from blown glass that’s been mirrorized and made into a ‘skin,’ it reflects you in thousands of convex mirrors that atomize your reflection, breaking you into a bunch of tiny parts. When you’re standing there, perfectly still, you could feel like you almost disappear, but when you make any small movement, these convex mirrors amplify your movement across the piece’s entire surface.”

“So, for the artist,” Silbert continues, “it’s the idea of what does it take to make change? How big do you have to be to make change? The answer that this piece is trying to give you is that you don’t have to be big at all, that the change itself doesn’t have to be big— it can be whatever you can do—and that your change will become amplified when you work together, when you are part of something bigger. And that’s a really important message.” 

To celebrate the conclusion of this long journey, we caught up with Anjali Srinivasan to find out how it feels to have {Saans} (2022.4.1) installed and on view.