Home is where the heart is. Home is where you hang your hat. There's no place like Home.
For people all over the world, the concept of Home is an ever-present truth. The details may differ from culture to culture, but it plays a distinct role in our lives regardless of these differences. From the time we are born to the time we die, we are confronted with the homes that are provided for us, the homes we leave, the homes we return to, and the homes we make for ourselves.
In “Home,” artists Kay Healy, Brenna K. Murphy, and Emily Manalo Ruiz invite us to consider what Home means to us and how the parameters of its meaning can change. They explore this question in a variety of contexts and mediums, through the lens of emotional experience, cultural code, memory, and nostalgia. They are particularly interested in the inherent materiality of Home. Domestic furniture and objects, textiles, everyday artifacts, and even the human bodies that occupy our homes are investigated in an effort to understand how these aspects of the physical world affect the intangible realm of human psyche and emotion. How can a doily inform our understanding of Home? Or an armchair? Or a collection of old letters? In a world of increasing mobility and instability, how could a different set of physical attributes in our home change its emotional significance for us?
Home is a conundrum. For many, it can be simultaneously fixed and shifting, desired and rejected, and in the realm of both material and immaterial. Cultivating a sense of Home that goes beyond satisfying the need for mere shelter is a distinctly human experience, one that continually captures our imaginations. Whether our domestic life is filled with love, or neglect, or simple mundanity, we are intrinsically bound to our concept and experience of Home - its influence on us is ever-present and uniquely profound.