GAZE: a labyrinth with something to say

GAZE is a labyrinth. Transparent acrylic panels, black-lit, etched with words of encouragement and acceptance and motifs that shift as a programmed array of rainbow light moves through them. You walk it. The walls change color while you do. Music plays. People slow down in here without being asked.

GAZE is a collaboration with the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization in the country. It opened at Hopscotch San Antonio in August 2021 and later came to Portland, where Roy “The Wiz” Trammel lit it. The concept and the etched artwork are HRC’s. The build and the light programming came from the people who make our rooms.

HRC’s own words on why: “Changing hearts and minds is the first step toward advancing equality. Reaching people through art and interactive experiences is an innovative way of directly connecting to communities.”

Art gets people into a room who would not otherwise share one. That is the whole theory of this building, and GAZE is the clearest case: an organization with something to say, and a place where tens of thousands of people a year walk through it slowly, on a Saturday, with their kids and their dates and their grandparents. June is its busiest month. The rest of the year it keeps doing the work quietly.

The film above is a slow walk through the Portland labyrinth. Take it at that speed in person.