Rendering of Installation, 2020
Fate or Fiction illustrates narratives that have defined my home life, and it considers what role physical space plays in those narratives. Four constructed reality photographs juxtapose process shots of my childhood home. The 20th century images lack homestead experiences, but the self-portraits narrate them. Do the crafted phenomena within a single, fabricated room overshadow the impending experiences of an assembled structure, or does fate defy fiction?
Heritage, 2020
Comfort, 2020
Settlement, 2020
Routine, 2020
Cut away excess, 1996
Pulling wire off spool, 1996
Half finished, half unfinished, 1996
Untitled, 1996
THE SECRET ROOM UNDER THE STAIRS, 1996
Fireplace, 1996
Mobile pump provides pressure to clean outside, 1996
Make sure to have plenty of doors, 1996
Brick just outside Baby's room, 1996
With the help of 3D Studio Manager Jonathan Pellitteri, I designed and constructed the walls of the studio set, just as my parents commissioned the design and construction of our home. Popular Southern design motifs inspired the recurring “wallpaper” of the studio shots, which is simply composed of bed sheets. Its impermanence speaks to the innate fiction of the studio portraiture, but its domestic quality emphasizes an essence of home. I utilized some personal objects as well as borrowed objects to stage each scene, but I devised and produced the cross-stitch message (featured in Heritage) over a month’s time. This project originally targeted the influence and personal strain of social roles as a privileged Southern woman, but now this idea is one of many in discussion.
This body of work is a part of my BFA senior exhibition, Render Visible. The virtual exhibition is available here.