Icarus Falling (2024)
360 Immersive Video, Unity Game Engine
Exhibited at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum's Planetarium, Kalamazoo, MI

Icarus Falling reimagines the myth of Icarus as told in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In this version, Icarus ascends toward the Sun, and as he is consumed by the star’s brilliant light, the Sun erupts in a violent explosion. Using Unity’s ragdoll physics, a cascade of bodies, houses, trees, ants, clocks, trains, and brick-textured sculptures rains down from the sky, creating a surreal and chaotic descent. The imagery in this piece draws inspiration from David Wojnarowicz’s painting Science Lesson. In Wojnarowicz’s work, bodies fall from the sky, but rather than descending from the heavens, they are expelled from the Earth itself. His painting critiques the dehumanizing effects of science and dominant ideologies, especially on marginalized communities. These falling bodies, treated as disposable and devoid of value, symbolize the byproducts of a world that often reduces people to mere "experiments." Icarus Falling merges the iconography of the ancient Icarus myth with Wojnarowicz’s critique, creating a narrative that contrasts Icarus’s ambitious ascent to the stars with the grim reality of bodies cast away from Earth. Through this juxtaposition, the piece explores the interplay between human desire and rejection and neglect.

David Wojnarowicz, Science Lesson, 1982-1983

Pieter Bruegel, The Fall of Icarus ,1560