Leave a Window Open for Me
Role
Fabricator, Storyteller, Designer, Artist
Project Type
Material
Exhibition
Installation
Acrylic, 3D printing, LED, Servo, Arduino
Digital Futures Open Show, Toronto, 2020
My Art is Real Exhibition, Toronto, 2021
I wanted to create this personal space within a box for the public because it is my story and I’m willing to share it with everyone. It is designed to be viewed through the “window” and one person per time so that the audience could have a more intimate and immersive experience.
This is a story about me going through insomnia and depression for several months when I was in New York. When I couldn’t sleep, the window was one of the things that I stared at the most, and I kept thinking about all the things that I shouldn’t have done and could have done. The stress was so real that it constantly haunted me in my head, the slightest light or noise became utterly unbearable. I could feel the bed spinning like a disc, or was it me spinning in my head? It didn’t matter day or night, they were the same, the thoughts kept me awake, and the music that played was drowning me.
But I don’t want to drag the audience into a bad mood, it is not what my intention is, ever since I stepped out of that situation, I’ve been proud of myself for doing that and I want to let people know that it is not undefeatable and you are not alone.
The initial idea of building an expanding space within a box was to see how the contrast between the outside and inside could be, the surprise element is always a twist that I want to collaborate in my design. I’ve been to multiple Yayoi Kusama’s exhibitions, and each time I’m amazed by how the glasses are forming these rooms. I was blessed to see Samara Golden’s work, The Meat Grinder’s Iron Clothes, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. It was a multilevel installation built with mirrors to expand the space between where the audience was standing. Looking up and down when standing there in between, the feeling was oddly satisfying, it made me lost in the thought of an existential crisis.
