2D Work

The home is generally thought of as a safe place, where we go to get away from the stress and negativity we may face in our lives. 

But what happens when that safety is disrupted? How do we react when the domestic space is turned into something unfamiliar or even uncomfortable?

The answers to these questions may not come right away, but after seeing the home in unfamiliar contexts, it allows us to think critically about the objects we place in the home and how we interact with them. Constructions from the world exist in our homes.

The postcards take different approaches to answering the questions posed. For the first , the goal was to make the familiar strange. I used a familiar image of my life; my left wall in my apartment. The map has become so familiar to me centered on that wall. I reversed them, putting the map on the large wall space and the blank wall space in the middle where the map is supposed to be. I added some bright sunglasses on top. The reversal creates a tension because it feels like the map is looking at you, instead of you looking at the map.

The second postcard I call “The Eternal Wall”. Inspired by Tom Bamberger, it is focused on repetition. On one side of the room you see a fairly normal scene, with a wall and a couch. There are string lights above, and instead of ending, the lights just continue for a long time along a blank wall. It is confusing and unbalanced to a viewer, because the rest of the scene is not repeated. The social norms of what a home is supposed to look like is challenged. In addition, most of the time you see lights like that on the outside of homes, not on the inside. 

The third postcard is about transformation; giving new perspective to what is usually taken for granted. In this postcard I call “The Spectators”, The walls of my building are lined with pointed sunglasses, which stare at you from the wall. There are also knives that are suspended from the ceiling, seeming almost ready to drop on an unsuspecting passerby. This is an abnormal scenario for the viewer, because you can imagine yourself being watched by the eyes and having to dodge falling knives. I walk out that hallway every day without feeling watched or that I am in immediate danger, so this postcard gave me opportunity to make a safe space tense. 

The fourth postcard is inspired by one of my favorite artists, Jenny Holzer. It’s is more conceptual; focused on a sink with makeup brushes thrown around. The text, which is partially visible in some areas, reads; “who really paints my face each morning”. This refers to the action of applying cosmetics, but it also asks about societal norms, specifically for women. Do I have free will in applying makeup? Or do I put it on because I have been socialized to behave that way? This is an example of an outside construct manifesting in the home, even though I don’t think about it often. 

All four postcards aim at distorting our perceptions of the home. Some use physical tension, while others use conceptual tension. Either way, tension allows us to look into our spaces and see how our society exists in them and in us.

Here is the back of the postcard

I used images taken from my student apartment. My images focus around ideas of diversity, security, and feminism. I want to explore how social constructions manifest in private spaces like the home.

I happened to be in my apartment doing homework and I started taking images of random things, then I started questioning what significance these objects had for me. Many of my images related to the ideas of being secure in a space, relating to the space culturally, and social constructions. 

Hannah Colmer 2016