Hollow is an immersive installation experience to explore the empty promises little girls are given about what life is like. We are often told that if we play our cards right and work hard, our lives be beautiful and our dreams will come true; life frequently has other plans. As a child, antique furniture captivated me, and I imagined owning a home filled with beautiful, expensive things. In our current political and environmental climate, homeownership in South Florida is unattainable for the majority of the population, due to both rising prices and rising sea levels. The concept of home gives identity to humans, and I am digging further into this concept through this project.
The pieces comprising Hollow are life-sized, non-functional facsimiles of Victorian-era style home furnishings, décor, and personal items created from pink fabric. I pull stock images of Victorian pieces from the internet, import them into Adobe Illustrator and create vector files of patterns which are then laser cut. The elements are then meticulously stitched together. While the work is three-dimensional and in the round, it possesses no structural integrity and relies on ribbon to hold it up from the ceiling, or hangs on the wall and slumps on the floor. This hollowness personifies the pieces to have a feeling of exhaustion or disappointment while looking pretty and ornate.