Home Sweet Home Montserrat Gallery November 4, 2011- January 21, 2011
Home Sweet Home features site-specific installations by three New
England artists: Elizabeth Alexander, Samantha Fields, and Kirsten
Reynolds. Each artist explores the boundaries of ‘the home’ within both
an architectural and feminist context. Together they provide a critique
of the cultural power structure that is the domestic sphere. Each artist
engages specifically with both exterior and interior walls as the primary
signifier of home, challenging the essential function that is performed
by these architectural elements to create boundaries between outside
and in, and the public and the private.
Architecture is a reflection of our relationship with space and provides a
stage for the act of life. Combined with the act of living, it is what makes
a shelter a home. In the words of architect Alex Schweder La, “Architecture is a psychological experience, a visual and emotional reflection of our bodies in space. Architecture is a cultural construct and buildings are a reflection of who we would like to be.” The home is both a real and a symbolic space, functional, but laden with meaning and memories. Home in this exhibition is presented as a stage for gender roles to be either played out or thwarted.
