MARY CLARA HUTCHISON

My couch (affectionately known as The Couch) and vanity (my mother’s before mine), both of which I dearly love, have weakened beyond use. Reflecting on how I acquired these pieces through collection and inheritance, and carried these pieces from place to place, I realize that I consider them parts of my own being. In their decay, they are signifiers of my own aging process.

House//Hold is an installation exploring how our bodies relate to our home spaces. Utilizing materials and furniture sourced from my own home, House//Hold reflects the physiological interactions and attachments that form between humans and objects, and the methods we use to ultimately detach ourselves from our objects. The specimens I collected from The Couch attempt to preserve cross sections of its physical experience. By dismantling The Couch and The Vanity further, I distance myself from them as emotional fixtures in my life and reconcile with their death. Imparting remnants of my own body incorporates my own deterioration.

The simultaneous destructive and creative nature of the pieces reflects the rhythms of deterioration and rejuvenation we experience in tandem with, and often in response to, our objects and home-making materials.