Nona Garcia’s use of the X-ray machine has its origins in her childhood. Her parents were doctors, and as a young girl, she became familiar with hospitals and medical laboratories, and their equipment. X-rays were one of her first memories of viewing the everyday through a new lens; they allowed her to experience looking at the world differently, and to explore the hidden nature of objects. Paradoxically, the objects she X-rays often become more mysterious, taking on a new life and creating a dichotomy between the transparent and the mystical, the sublime and the everyday.

Garcia’s Hallow 2018 hovers between the celebratory and the macabre. The Gallery’s large windows become natural light boxes — recalling stained-glass cathedral windows — hosting a mandala formed from the X-rayed bones of animals. White and luminescent against a dense black background, the intricate symmetrical designs suggest flower and spiral motifs; it is only on closer inspection that the elements are revealed to be tiny parts of a spinal cord or a skull. Living corals are combined with the bones of animals — hyenas, camels, crocodiles, beavers, birds and deer — in an enigmatic reflection on the underlying presence of death in life.