To see the world in a grain of sand
August 7 – September 29, 2025
Factory Media Centre, Hamilton, Canada
Noni Kaur, Ryan Kelln, and Chris Myhr
Curated by Gladys Lou
Reception: Friday, August 22nd, 7-9PM
To see the world in a grain of sand is a multisensory exhibition that explores sand as a medium of communication, in an attempt to bridge the physical and the digital, the natural and the artificial, and the past and the future.
In Buddhist cosmology, every being is likened to a grain of sand – seemingly insignificant, yet essential to the infinite cycles of the universe. As both building blocks and residue, sand underpins human development, from construction and glass-making to silicon-based computing and digital infrastructure. How does the growing demand for sand in technology shape contemporary discourse on resource extraction, environmental degradation, and global inequality? And how might sand, like the hourglass, capture and reverse time?
Drawing inspiration from William Blake’s poem, Auguries of Innocence (1863), the exhibition reflects on how the smallest particles of matter encode vast cultural, ecological, and geopolitical significance.
Unlike dust, which disperses and dissipates, sand retains a quiet agency, shifting, migrating, and accumulating. Malleable and mutable, it exists as a site of alchemical transformation, deeply embedded in mythology, magic, and folklore. Just as humanity is unified as a species, yet each possesses individual memories and characteristics, each grain of sand documents and preserves its own history and tactility. Defined by its size rather than its material composition, sand becomes a metaphor for differences within sameness: a cosmos of distinct substances collectively categorized as “sand.”
In the making of sand mandalas, millions of grains of sand are meticulously arranged and charged with spiritual blessings, only to be ritually dismantled and returned to nature, marking the impermanence of life. This cyclical understanding of time echoes Nietzsche’s concept of the eternal return, where events endlessly recur in an infinite loop. This philosophy also resonates with Vasari’s understanding of art as perpetual cycles of origin, flourishing, and decay, and reemerges in literature such as Jorge Luis Borges’s The Immortal, where immortality is imagined as a state of living in the realm of the collective unconscious. To see the world in a grain of sand extends this intellectual lineage, foregrounding artworks that trace the duality of the eternal and the ephemeral, merging ancient practices with futuristic visions.
The exhibition brings together artworks across diverse media, ranging from an AI installation with interactive sand, backlit lightboxes featuring magnified photographs of microplastics, to desiccated coconut compositions that evoke the biospheric terrain. Together, the selected works stimulate a range of sensory experiences conjured from the material, symbolic, and spiritual dimensions of sand. The exhibition draws attention to the interconnected systems, both visible and invisible, that live within the smallest of things, drawing visitors closer to the elemental units that shape the worlds we build, inherit, and imagine.
Factory Media Centre, Hamilton, Canada
Noni Kaur, Ryan Kelln, and Chris Myhr
Curated by Gladys Lou
Reception: Friday, August 22nd, 7-9PM
To see the world in a grain of sand is a multisensory exhibition that explores sand as a medium of communication, in an attempt to bridge the physical and the digital, the natural and the artificial, and the past and the future.
In Buddhist cosmology, every being is likened to a grain of sand – seemingly insignificant, yet essential to the infinite cycles of the universe. As both building blocks and residue, sand underpins human development, from construction and glass-making to silicon-based computing and digital infrastructure. How does the growing demand for sand in technology shape contemporary discourse on resource extraction, environmental degradation, and global inequality? And how might sand, like the hourglass, capture and reverse time?
Drawing inspiration from William Blake’s poem, Auguries of Innocence (1863), the exhibition reflects on how the smallest particles of matter encode vast cultural, ecological, and geopolitical significance.
Unlike dust, which disperses and dissipates, sand retains a quiet agency, shifting, migrating, and accumulating. Malleable and mutable, it exists as a site of alchemical transformation, deeply embedded in mythology, magic, and folklore. Just as humanity is unified as a species, yet each possesses individual memories and characteristics, each grain of sand documents and preserves its own history and tactility. Defined by its size rather than its material composition, sand becomes a metaphor for differences within sameness: a cosmos of distinct substances collectively categorized as “sand.”
In the making of sand mandalas, millions of grains of sand are meticulously arranged and charged with spiritual blessings, only to be ritually dismantled and returned to nature, marking the impermanence of life. This cyclical understanding of time echoes Nietzsche’s concept of the eternal return, where events endlessly recur in an infinite loop. This philosophy also resonates with Vasari’s understanding of art as perpetual cycles of origin, flourishing, and decay, and reemerges in literature such as Jorge Luis Borges’s The Immortal, where immortality is imagined as a state of living in the realm of the collective unconscious. To see the world in a grain of sand extends this intellectual lineage, foregrounding artworks that trace the duality of the eternal and the ephemeral, merging ancient practices with futuristic visions.
The exhibition brings together artworks across diverse media, ranging from an AI installation with interactive sand, backlit lightboxes featuring magnified photographs of microplastics, to desiccated coconut compositions that evoke the biospheric terrain. Together, the selected works stimulate a range of sensory experiences conjured from the material, symbolic, and spiritual dimensions of sand. The exhibition draws attention to the interconnected systems, both visible and invisible, that live within the smallest of things, drawing visitors closer to the elemental units that shape the worlds we build, inherit, and imagine.
Installation view from To see the world in a grain of sand, Factory Media Centre, Hamilton, Canada, August 6 – September 29, 2025.
Photo: Hubert Swietorzecki
Photo: Hubert Swietorzecki
