Make Yourself at Home

MFA first year review at WSU, Gallery II.

This installation was both an invitation and a dare to the viewer to enter a home-like environment and explore their own histories through comfort or discomfort, drawn in by the glow of a flickering vintage TV and inviting ambient light, onlookers were allowed to wander and occupy the rooms of the constructed house. The space was inhabited by a cast of characters throughout the duration of the gallery who changed small details over time in their specific rooms and left pieces of themselves behind to be discovered, including a jacket for each persona on the coat hanger.

The kitchen was styled like an informercial set, a perfect place for housewife Edna Johnson to demonstrate the power of Lem n’ Forget, a cleaner that saves face for the whole family! In the Livelihood Room, server Indi Jones made coffee, contemplating the need for the millennial generation to work several jobs to earn a somewhat comfortable living. The kids room was inhabited by DJ MoonShadow, a hippie weirdo that invited people into the SpaceFort with a childlike spirit to talk big life ideas and take a break from it all. The bathroom, haunted by feminine struggles, was the site of a performance piece by Amelie Lune, reliving and emerging from a traumatic experience and leaving the evidence of her trouble in the knocked down shower curtain and each handmade pink tile.