“Active/Away” is an installation that recreates my bedroom. Everyday for one week I would sit, work, watch t.v. and sleep in the ground level window at a gallery in downtown Lowell. Breaking down the barrier of closed doors and walls gave me and the people passing by opportunities to interact with one another without a filter. This was uncomfortable and confrontational which is the opposite of how we interact with the world through our screens today. Social media allows us to project to everyone what you want them to see. We curate our lives to appear successful and happy to everyone else. I felt as though I had become lost in the curation of my own life, and this was an experiment to find and re-establish an honest connection between myself and others.
Space is a privilege, and something I often find taking for granted with the spaces I am lucky enough to be able to relax in. What I found was that I was just as obsessed with how I appeared to the outside but in a much more direct and constant way that felt more physical than conceptual. I couldn’t hide who I was. My identity as a woman became even scarier.
