Third Eye — Wearable Sculpture in Natural Fibers

Third Eye: a sculptural structure of natural fibers with two circular openings, on a black ground

We do not see with our eyes alone.

Third Eye is a sculptural project exploring how perception is shaped by memory, belief and prior experience. The works begin from the act of seeing itself, treating it as a process affected by what we carry within us before our eyes land on what is in front of us.

Third Eye, 2025
Natural fibers, pigment
Approx. 35 × 28 × 18 cm

About the project

The works take the form of translucent wearable structures, made of natural fibers and shaped by hand around the eye and face. These forms place a material layer between the eye and the surrounding world, turning vision into an experience in which revealing, concealing and interpreting overlap.

As light passes through the fibers and shadows and edges shift with the movement of the body and the angle of the gaze, what we see becomes continuously open to change. The project uses this relationship between material, eye and light to examine the conditions through which we build our sense of clarity and certainty.

The idea

Third Eye regards seeing as an experience conditioned by everything that precedes it. Memory, belief and expectation do not stay separate from the way we understand the world. They enter into the formation of what we see and the meaning we give it.

The project carries this idea to the body by placing a material structure in front of the eye. Although the fibers are translucent, they reorganise the field of vision and change the relationship between the viewer and what stands before them. Looking becomes a continuous act of building meaning, shifting with the position of the body, the light and the material.

Through this shift, the work approaches the moment in which confidence in what appears obvious recedes, and seeing itself becomes the subject of examination.

Material and form

The works are made from light natural fibers shaped by hand into irregular organic configurations. The nature of the material allows light to pass through it, while its density and undulations produce varying degrees of translucency and shadow.

The forms move around the eye and the face without settling into fixed geometric boundaries, appearing at times as an extension of the body and at others as a layer independent from it. With movement, the relationship between form, face and surrounding space changes, and the body becomes part of how the work is read.

The work and the body

When Third Eye is worn, the work moves from being a sculptural object to an experience tied directly to the act of looking. The face becomes the site where the work meets the body, and the movement of the head and the shifting angle of vision become elements that affect the presence of the piece.

Marya Mayan wearing Third Eye in front of her face, the natural fibers covering the eye area — The work worn, studio.

Marya Mayan holding Third Eye in front of her eye among visitors at an exhibition — The work among people.

In this sense, the form does not work only as a frame for the eye, but as a medium that reshapes the relationship between inside and outside, between what we see and what we carry with us while seeing.

With each new viewer the position of the work changes, and with it the distance between face, material and light.

Editions

The project develops through different treatments of the material.

Monochrome Edition

النسخة الأحادية

The fibers keep their natural, quiet tones, with the focus on their relationship to light, shadow and air, and on the visual presence of the material itself.

Pigmented Edition

النسخة المصبوغة

Colour enters the structure of the fibers and becomes part of the experience of seeing, as the relationship between face, material and light changes with the colour and its density.

Relation to the practice

Third Eye extends from Marya Mayan's interest in how meaning and perception are formed through the relationships between idea, material, context and experience. The project takes something familiar and bound to vision, then rebuilds its relationship to the body to reveal how what is supposed to help us see can at the same time change the way we see.

The work becomes a space for testing perception itself, and for reconsidering the distance between what appears in front of us and what we believe we know.