[performative installation]-2012

 

I am exploring the desire to crawl back into the womb: is it from a feeling of vulnerability? Or of nostalgia? Why must people wrap themselves in a cocoon of alcohol when they’re not able to cope with their life? Why must we tuck under our office desks after our boss gives us a bad time? Why do I need to be tightly held throughout the day? The things we do when we are most weak and defenseless often come out looking like we are trying to enter some sort of cave, physically or metaphorically. This phenomenon is something that most people deal with in a variety of ways, in my case by projecting them onto my partner. The womb is the feeling of protection and wholeness from an imaginary place we think we remember in utero. I believe this desire is not tied to our actual mothers but more of the psychic mother who we are distant from enough to not think of characteristics of the subject, but only feelings from the object-in this case the consolation from the womb.
 
My installation addresses this often hidden yearning as I invite the audience to open up with me. I want them to question their need for a safe space in times when they are most vulnerable. I want this installation to seem self-consciously dreamlike where all the materials will be neutral colors, and the fabric and wood will be raw to evoke blurred remembrances and human-fabrication.  Since this theme has been haunting me for a while, I feel that this piece will never be finished, but will continue on with pieces added on and taken off, somewhat like memory. I would like to recreate this to have the work's ephemerality fluctuate and envelop different spaces and different times.