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NAYMLAP: The Piercing Vision
An entry for The Met x FLORA Museum Challenge
A thousand years ago, a Sicán ruler on Peru's north coast was buried wearing a mask of hammered gold and cinnabar red its winged eyes marked with the Sicán Deity's "piercing vision," believed to guide the dead into ancestorhood.
For this project, I reimagined that same mask as a piece of wearable fashion: sculptural gold sunglasses that carry over its exact material language — the hammered gold, the cinnabar and verdigris patina, the winged eye silhouette, and even its original gold danglers built for the living instead of the dead.
The full process is documented on FLORA:
— Concept exploration (15+ directions branching off the original mask)
— Symmetry and detail refinement
— A custom studio environment ("the Gold Chamber") built entirely from the mask's own palette
— A full campaign shoot inside that space
Original artwork reference: Lambayeque (Sicán) Funerary Mask, 900–1100 CE, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession 1974.271.35. (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/309959 )
Full canvas: app.flora.ai/js78eg2ydn0xc0v57t7nmfn4j58dqek9
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