To start the new term i first want to reflect on the last (in which i built my own headspace using objects from my room) , I feel that i successfully explored my themes and ideas however I could have refined them further. I want to expand on my previous project by exploring my home and what it means to me. To do this I asked myself a set of questions.
- 1.How could i define home?
- 2.Where is my home?
- 3.What does home mean to me?
- 4. Are there contradtictions?
- 5.How do i make myself at home?
- 1.Home is where I live. Its a space to rest and have space for myself.
- 2.I have many Homes; My room at university, My parents flat back in gloucestershire, My best friends house back in gloucestershire, My dads flat, my girlfriends mums house heere in aber.
- 3. Home is where i can be myself, where i can stop masking and drop my walls which protect my insecurities.
- 4.However i know home isnt always this, sometimes my home to me is a place full of stress due to family relationships, money, meantl helath issues, trauma ect…
- 5. i like to make myself feel at home through comfort, in my eyes my room is a nest inwhich i can heal from the outside world.
After answering these questions i found myself left with even more in regards to myself and my space. To dissect on my last project, if the objects are my personality materialised then who am i without them? Is my home not my home without them? Without my personality? ….
Brain storming!
Beginning to research other artists interpolation and representations of the home I began to look online and on Pinterest. Here is a list of some artists that caught my eye:
- Do Ho Suh I enjoy both his 3D work and some of his string like creation of houses, his work has an almsot surreal representation of home.
- Tony Hornecker – His earlier work shows experimentation with textiles in a way that plays with structure (the house made of colthes for example) and makes me think about all the clothes i own, in particular my larger fluffy coats.
- Leyla Cardenas- Her scultural pieces use teextures to represent decay and descrutation. She then also uses materials to recontract and create a new. I enjoy this idea contrast and can see many possibilities for it on a conceptual level.
- Whooli Chen- This artist creates beautiful illustrations in which he reimagines the home and builds a colourful and detailed piece. I persoanlly enjoy illustration and feel i havent shown my full potential in this feild yet, i also think about the takeover and what is it i want to show to the public?
From this, I began to think about where I wanted to go with my art and how I want to represent the theme of home. Touching on a personal note and after researching some inspiration on Pinterest, I’m very torn between developing on my previous work, taking my home out of context and moving it into a new shell or focusing more on the themes of deconstruction and reconstruction in other mediums.
An interesting word I was taught in my personal tutorial was ” Unheimlich” meaning an uncanny familiarity or unheimlich recognition- The uncanny is the psychological experience of something as not simply mysterious, but creepy, often in a strangely familiar way. It may describe incidents where a familiar thing or event is encountered in an unsettling, eerie, or taboo context. — When thinking about why this word resonates with me I go back to my childhood and teen years before I moved out, my family has always had issues with money, stress and tension was often frequent and I recognise this in other places every day.
Experimenting
To begin my experiments i am choosing to photograph my room here in Aberystwyth university accommodation and have a more holistic view of my home than my project last term. It’s important for me to document my room as it will give me a direct comparison to reflect on later.
