Houston based Australian artist Joel Zika’s latest work uses digital technology to explore our relationship with ornament in public space.  

Acanthus is an installation work featuring digital sculptures and holographic projections that audiences can control. The unique combination of technology in the work allows particpants to manipulate richly decorative sculptures as if they were flowers in a garden.

This work continues Zika’s exploration into the way we communicate through our built environment, using Victorian floral decoration to create an immersive environment that encourages and involves its inhabitants.

Urban Sentinels is a site-specific installation composed of four three-dimensional sculptures derived from my abstract geometric works on paper. These sentinels are not traditional protectors of territory or warriors in defense—they are quiet observers, guardians of presence who offer reflection rather than control.

In the imagined harmonious world, a sentinel is not a figure of defense, but a presence of care—one who holds space, bridges transitions, and watches not for danger, but for meaning. These sculptural forms step into that role within the urban landscape. They are not barriers, but beacons—custodians of invisible thresholds where the personal and public intersect.

Rooted in architectural language, the forms echo the rigor of design while embracing intuitive color and rhythm. Their vibrant planes and angles interact with their surroundings, creating moments of stillness within the city’s constant motion. In a time, shaped by urgency, these sentinels invite a pause—a space to breathe, contemplate, and reconnect.

Installed within a large window, their “home” is framed by a green-painted mural reminiscent of urban vegetation. A smaller painted window offers a visual companion, while a suspended mobile—evoking the clouds above the city—adds a playful, dreamlike presence. By night, projection mapping animates the sculptures, transforming them into illuminated vessels of memory and imagination.

These sentinels do not guard against harm—they guard possibility. They defend the imagination and open space for poetic presence. Ultimately, Urban Sentinels is not merely an installation, but a living architecture of hope, attention, and belonging. In their stillness, they speak—softly yet profoundly—reminding us to see, to remember, and to dream.

Bennie Flores Ansell (b. 1967, Manila, Philippines) is a Houston based artist whose photography-based installations merge light, sculpture, and spatial interventions to explore migration and movement. Her work often employs repetition, projection, and deconstructed photographic forms, treating migration as a lived, embodied experience and revealing moments of beauty held within transition. 

She has participated in residencies and fellowships at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, the Houston Center for Photography, the Asia Society Museum’s Artists on Site program, and the American Photography Institute at New York University. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the International Center of Photography, the Daegu Photography Biennale, FotoFest Biennial, Seattle Museum of Art, Lawndale Art Center, Blaffer Museum, Project Row Houses, and Uno Art Space in Stuttgart. 

Ansell’s public art projects include The Alief Swarm for the Alief Community Center and commissions for the Houston Arts Alliance and the University of Houston. She holds an MFA in Photography from the University of Houston and a BA in Photography from the University of South Florida.