Garden of Consciousness-Only is a graduation installation created in 2005 at the Toride Campus of Tokyo University of the Arts. A diamond-shaped booth was rotated 45 degrees and used to bring together R.D.S., four works from Mirror Work — lace —, White Room White Mirror, and Mirror to Mirror Mind to Mind. Symmetry, diagonality, and opposing relations were used to compose the multiple works as a single spatial arrangement.

The title draws on the Buddhist epistemological concept of “Consciousness-Only” (Yuishiki), in which phenomena are understood as arising through cognition rather than simply being given by an external world. The work was not intended to explain Buddhist thought itself. By layering mirror images, symmetrical iconographies, and facing surfaces, I attempted to treat the relationship between “seeing” and “what is seen” as a spatial problem.

In retrospect, I feel that the formal symmetry and opposing relationships were somewhat conceptually ahead of the viewer’s actual visual experience. Whether the work fully succeeded as an experience that included the viewer entering the space, moving through it, and appearing in the mirrors remains an open question. In that sense, the installation marks an intermediate stage between arranging individual mirror works and thinking of space itself—including the viewer’s body—as part of the work.