N. Dash’s solo exhibit at the Hammer Museum begins with a series of Duratrans transparencies displaying magnified wreaths of frayed fabric in architectural light boxes. Her work, which faces the open and airy courtyard of the Los Angeles museum, was presented in conjunction with the Mandala of Compassion for two weeks, a live exhibit in which Tibetan Buddhist monks constructed a sacred mandala using colored sands and methods passed down over two millennia. It’s a lovely coincidence that Mandala of Compassion and N. Dash’s work were featured around the same time: They converged harmoniously in their emphasis on creative process, organic materials, and the ultimate impermanence of matter.

N. Dash. Hammer Projects: N. Dash, 2014; installation view, Los Angeles. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: N. Dash.

Dash’s floor-to-ceiling light boxes illuminate the pale wreaths of fibers floating in a cool, aqueous light that ripples almost undetectably. These suspended fibers were deconstructed by her hands over many hours in her daily routine, and she began photographing the twists of fabric in 2002 to make a physical record of her creative energy.

The documentation of her process through physical objects continues upstairs in the vault gallery with silver gelatin prints of various worked fabrics, each a testament and witness to the invisible but powerful reality of creative energy. These prints are featured beside her larger works made of adobe, indigo, jute, oil, graphite, wood, linen, and string, some of which are stapled directly into the museum wall in order to show each individual work’s journey through different spaces. Dash is particularly interested in “wear,” the accumulation of texture of an object as it passes through different spaces.

N. Dash. Untitled, 2014; adobe, oil, pigment, string, acrylic, linen, jute, and wood support. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: N. Dash.

N. Dash. Untitled, 2014; adobe, pigment, string, acrylic, linen, jute, and wood support. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: N. Dash.

Dash’s exploration of space, matter, and process stems in part from her visit to New Mexico in 2002, in which she visited an adobe house that had been built with the excavated earth beside it. The transformation of dirt—and the negative space that remained as a reminder of the structure’s autochthonic origin—greatly impressed Dash, who now uses the New Mexican earth in her works, often mixing and applying adobe by hand. All untitled, the larger works possess both feminine and masculine qualities in their structural geometry, earthiness, and sensuality.

Hammer Projects: N. Dash is on view at Hammer Museum in Los Angeles through January 25, 2015.