“Under the King’s Chamber” descends into the ancient tunnels beneath the Great Pyramid — a space where sound thickens, time folds, and the body becomes acutely aware of stone. This mixed-media collage reconstructs that subterranean encounter not through historical illustration, but through sensory memory: the pressurized silence, the soft echo of air against limestone, the weight of centuries suspended overhead.
The surface is built in geological strata: layered paper-mâché, weathered fragments, mineral pigment, and torn paper embedded like sediment. These textures mimic the architecture beneath Giza — tight passageways, carved angles, and the almost suffocating intimacy of moving through stone older than written history. The palette is intentionally muted: ochres, umbers, soft blacks, and earthen neutrals that recall dust, shadow, and the inner hush of the pyramid’s corridors.
For a neurodivergent mind, spaces like this are overwhelming in their stillness. Sensory information does not fade; it reverberates. Every vibration becomes a pulse. Every shadow becomes a contour. Every surface becomes a memory. This work archives that experience — the hyper-awareness, the heaviness, the awe — translating the physicality of the tunnels into emotional architecture.
This piece is not about Egypt as tourists know it; it is about the intimate, interior encounter with deep time. Being “beneath” something physically massive. Feeling both ancient and small. The quiet terror and quiet transcendence of being in a place designed to hold the dead yet echoing with the heartbeat of the living.
As a cornerstone of the Sensory Archives series, “Under the King’s Chamber” expands the project’s geography into subterranean spaces — mapping not just cities, but thresholds, burial chambers, and interior worlds.
