Keywords

Domesticity, Home, Routine, Mixed Media, Installation Art

Abstract

This thesis body of work inspects the changes in the artist’s relationship to domesticity and their perceived sense of control over the spaces they have called home. By creating and embellishing spaces that subvert the threshold between the physical and psychic, the works stimulate feelings of comfort or discomfort. Installations of found materials, mixed media, and text-based dark humor, come together to account for this artist’s attempt to navigate the tediousness of daily life. The work takes into consideration the intangible rules that infiltrate a household, defining the framework in which a person learns to live within, or adapt to, its confines. These rules are defined by the culture of the presumed nuclear family and appointed based on one’s status within it, such as this artist’s role of eldest daughter. There are also self-appointed rules meant to ease anxieties of the overwhelming nature of the ordinary, such as the routines and habits this artist relies on to get through their everyday. This artist’s exploration of various acts of making, such as embroidery, is a compulsory physical manifestation of power over the self. This exertion becomes a necessity when the condition of autonomy is felt to be lacking. This thesis installation asks the viewer to contemplate their own mind and body in relation to the intimate spaces they inhabit and the objects that occupy them.

Completion Date

2026

Semester

Spring

Committee Chair

Poindexter, Carla

Degree

Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)

College

College of Arts and Humanities

Department

School of Visual Art and Design

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Identifier

DP0053235

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