Gwendolyn Zabicki
Hagia Sophia Sketches Hagia Sophia Sketch 2 Using a circle cutter  More Progress Sitting Inside Painting Cut a Hole Today for one of the lamps Cutting Tile Sanding Tile! Finished Tiling! Putting the Floor In Using A Biscuit Cutter Rough Assembly Lit Up Inside (lit up) Guilded Dome (Inside) Hagia Sophia Finished!! Back entrance!! Hagia Sophia (Inside!!) Inner Windows Outer Windows Outer Windows Finished! Untitled
The Hagia Sophia


With a grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, I built a miniature version of the Hagia Sophia, the Byzantine church-turned-museum in Istanbul, Turkey. This "dollhouse" has a gold dome, marble floors, and 168 windows all in a structure big enough to seat one adult inside. Housed in the walls are seasonal affective disorder lamps that start to influence the user after about 20 minutes of exposure. The real Hagia Sophia is famous for its beautiful dome and the mystical quality of light that reflects inside of it. I am attempting to reproduce that sensation in a small private place of comfort and delight. Religious buildings and decoration are meant to act as a bridge to heaven. My Hagia Sophia is in a similar way a bridge-- a bridge to a place I have never been, a secular contemplative place that exists as much physically as it does metaphysically.
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