Art is a symbiotic relationship between the viewer and the artwork, crafting infinite experiences that no viewer or artist can completely account for. The North Carolina Museum of Art’s “You Are Here” exhibit features immersive art installations that explore the creative side of this relationship — showing how art needs the viewer’s presence and participation in order to come to life. The exhibit will run through July 22 in NCMA’s Meymandi Exhibition Gallery and Ann and Jim Goodnight Museum Park.

“You Are Here” consists of various art installations by 15 contemporary artists who utilize a diverse range of media in order to interact with viewers. These works engage with the audience’s imaginations using light, sound, video and mixed media, and represent the fusion of both art and media at its finest.

Linda Dougherty, NCMA’s chief curator and curator of contemporary art, described the extensive planning that went into the exhibit.

“We started working on it three years ago,” Dougherty said. “We were looking at several artists whose work we were interested in bringing to the museum and then decided to do one big show that’s included all 15 of them. There’s 20 different projects by 15 different artists, and they’re all immersive installation experiences. Some of them are active, some of them aren’t, some are very low tech materials like tape of chain link fencing and some are very high tech, experimental, [and use] new media … so its a huge range.”

The exhibit’s opening piece is “Cinnabar,” a tape, sound and video installation at the entrance/exit of the museum’s East building. Heather Gordon, a Durham-based artist and creator of Cinnabar, regularly uses numbers and geometry in her artwork. Gordon described her piece’s  exploration of what can only be described as a transformative moment.  

“It’s very different from experiencing a sculpture or say a painting on a wall,” Gordon said. “These things … you occupy space with them. So in some way we complete the work and are transformed by it. Since my piece is situated at the door, it’s both the entrance and the exit [of the exhibit]. So I thought to think about it in terms of a duality and something related to alchemy, where it talks about this combination of sulfur and mercury in order to create this combination of opposites to bring together unity which creates a transformative moment.”

Gordon maps things in origami and uses numbers and geometry to tell a story. On the outside of “Cinnabar,” the atomic properties of mercury are mapped out in white and tan tape, and the properties of sulfur are mapped inside in red tape.

“In alchemy, they think of sulfur as the ideas and thoughts, so you might think of this as one’s experiences one’s knowledge, one’s sense of self and individuality and then mercury is the stuff of the world,” Gordon said. “It’s all the material, the atoms, the matter but it’s shapeless unless we apply a thought, an idea to it. The idea is that we bring ourselves with our ideas and our stuff of our bodies into this piece of artwork, and experience this environment in a way that changes us and our stuff and our view on the world.”

The overarching concept of “You Are Here” is to offer these immersive environments where viewers are not only spectators, but are also key participants in a work, according to Gordon. “Cinnabar” explores this very concept that flows throughout the exhibit’s experiences.

“You Are Here” viewers are given the chance to participate in their exploration of numerous concepts, such as the transience of life, the reconsideration of black female identity, human perception and memory, the cycle of destruction and renewal, ritual and faith, and much more. In this participation, the viewer becomes integral to the piece of art.

Gordon talked on why the exhibit is unique, and how it is changing traditional perceptions of art.

“I hope it will expand people’s definitions of what art can be and what it can be made out of and that it will change the way people experience art. A lot of these works require that you spend some time with them to really get the full experience,” Dougherty said. “It’s a really unique opportunity to see works by artists from all over the world, many of which who have never shown their work in North Carolina before.”

On Fridays from 5-9 p.m., the exhibit is free to college students with a valid student ID.  More information about the exhibit can be found online at: http://ncartmuseum.org/exhibition/you_are_here_light_color_and_sound_experiences.