Temporary House of Home
Thanks to the pandemic and social distancing, a generation of designers has graduated virtually unseen. What's more, in the months leading up to graduation, their education took place in front of a computer screen, often in complex domestic circumstances. How has this experience shaped their understanding of living and the home? In a series of two-monthly installations, graduates from this generation present their own highly personal views on home.
Laura Bosch: The Last Whispers of the Simulated Weeds
4 July to 5 September 2021 In Laura Bosch's graduation work, The Last Whispers of the Simulated Weeds, objects have mutated and morphed with the anthropocentric landscape. Here the theme is projected onto objects in and around the home. During the pandemic these items have experienced change; they have either been used a lot more or a good deal less. By exaggerating these changes, these objects take on a life of their own.
Francisca Khamis Giacoman: As Close As I Get
16 September to 7 November 2021 As the second iteration of the Home of Your Own Francisca Khamis Giacoman presents As Close As I Get, a follow up to her Sandberg Instituut graduation work. Coming from the Palestinian diaspora in Chile, Khamis Giacoman explores memories as traces of silenced narratives. She records and reconstructs stories of a house that lives on as a ghost in her family's oral tradition. As Close As I Get documents a failed visit to the house, still standing in Al-Makhrour in Palestine, but inaccessible to her family. This video merges Khamis Giacoman´s own journey to the house with the memories told by her great-aunt Labibe. To regain access and keep the memory of the house alive, Khamis Giacoman traces its floorplan in a series of activations. A set of steps reconstructs a part of the house and invites the visitor to rest.
(A)wake – If Walls Could Talk
18 November 2021 to 13 March 2022 For its third edition, Home of Your Own presents If Walls Could Talk, an installation reflecting on a new social fabric woven throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. While many expected increased solidarity alongside the shared pain of restriction and isolation, differences flourished online. The internet could be a democratic symphony of a multitude of voices, but instead it became an insular platform for 'the individual'. Inspired by the saying 'the walls are closing in', the installation introduces this confronting and polarising social fabric. It explores the zawiya (loosely translated as 'corner'), a Maghrebi and West African term for a place to gather and solve conflicts within the community. Originally associated with religion, it now appears in functions from the spiritual and educational to the social and political. Here, it is a space to reflect on - and try to resolve - today's tense and socially alienating climate.
Wendy Owusu: From Abena to Gloria
17 March 2022 to 15 May 2022 From Abena to Gloria is a textile project in which belongings and contexts from the family home of artist and designer Wendy Owusu are transformed into a collection of clothing. Her first clothing collection took as a starting point and source of inspiration Owusu's family home in France. For this new collection, she travels to Kumasi, Ghana, and applies the same concept to her other family home. From Abena To Gloria translates the customs, spaces and memories associated with the house, from the literal to the abstract, to explore the definition of home in a highly personal manner. The collection's title represents the journey between France and Ghana. Abena and Gloria are both the names of Wendy's mother: the first is her Ghanian name and the second her Western name.