This work consists of vinyl adhered to two window panels, installed facing one another on opposite sides of a walkway connecting Engineering buildings E6 and E7 on the University of Waterloo campus. It was installed in February 2024 as part of an exhibition jointly sponsored by the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Fine Arts.
Each panel layout consists of the first 72 elements listed in the periodic table. Approximately half of the elements in a panel are printed with letters in their normal orientation; the other half are horizontally reversed, as in a mirror image. The two panels themselves are mirror images of one another, so that each element that is printed in normal orientation in one panel is mirrored in the other. As a result, the shadow cast by one panel should match, in orientation and layout, the opposite panel. If the two panels could be viewed from outside the walkway looking in, they would appear identical. This work was inspired by a diptych painting by Laura Owens from 1999.
