This installation originated from a 1989 residency at MIT and stands as one of Campopiano’s most prestigious works.
Drawing inspiration from the medicine wheel of Native American traditions, the installation serves as a personal exploration of spiritual and cultural dimensions. According to this symbolic system, one enters the wheel from the south—representing birth and innocence. The west is the realm of the heart, emotions, and feelings. The east embodies the intellect and mind. The north symbolizes the balance between the two—wisdom.
Campopiano uses this conceptual structure to shape the layout of the room.
We begin in the southwest, with the instinct to create life. Blue wires—evocative of blood vessels, neurons, or lightning—represent the birth of a child and the formation of the cosmos. In the west, a bed evokes the full cycle of sex, birth, and death. Within the springs are 52 live mice, enacting this ongoing drama of the heart.
To reflect on the recycling of emotions, Campopiano embedded over 50 photographs from a discarded family album into the bed’s structure.
“I found it odd and a little sad to come across the Olson family album at a flea market. Did their lineage die out? How many families quietly dwindle to nothing?”
— Remo Campopiano
The mice wasted no time tearing the photos into nesting material for the many babies born during the exhibition. By the end of the show, only one photograph remained: the one placed in the high chair.
This, Campopiano admits, is the most personal element in the installation—his first contemplations about fatherhood.
“The more I considered what it means to fully experience the emotional side of life, the more I returned to the idea of family. One of the most profound human experiences is the creation of family.”
— Remo Campopiano
In the east—the domain of the mind—Campopiano constructs a high-tech cathedral to science. Suspended glass tubes form an altar-like centerpiece, alive with tropical fish. A medical cart contains the apparatuses that maintain three life-support systems.
Above a distillery, a miniature train embarks on a symbolic journey. As it passes a certain point, a relay switches off the gallery lights, enhancing the visibility of the train’s red laser caboose. The beam travels backward, reflecting off a mirror and illuminating the tubes, bubbles, and fish with radiant red light.
The antique mirror represents the bridge between mind and heart. Like the yin-yang symbol, it embodies the presence of the opposite within each side. To mirror the intellectual east in the emotional west, Campopiano built a high-tech still above the bed to provide water for the mice—sustaining life on both ends of the spectrum.
At the center of the gallery sits a large, dish-like table layered with sand and inhabited by a colony of 500 red ants. This is the heart of the show—balance. The ants, in symbiosis with their environment, model a kind of natural equilibrium—a lesson drawn from Native American philosophy.