Inner Circle

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Multimedia installation, 2016

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Inner Circle is a multimedia installation combining adhesive vinyl prints, a single channel video, a poster, and the smell of fresh bread.

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The prints installed directly on the room’s four windows, show four different animals licking windows. The term windowlicker is a derogatory euphemism for mental illness. As an insult, it serves to delineate the boundary between sane and insane, socially accepted beings and those excluded. Here they occupy the glass threshold between interior and exterior, playing on the notion of transparency through glass used in the modernist building in which the exhibition is housed. Their position serves to confront the line separating human from nonhuman, and subject from object.

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The video playing is obviously this is a girl’s apartment  which explores the contemporary boundaries of the home as they relate to the construction of self.

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Sprayed throughout the space at intervals of 30 minutes, the artificial smell of freshly baked bread fills the space. Made and canned by a company specializing in smells, the smell is strangely convincing and nauseating at the same time. This piece plays on a trick used by real-estate agents when selling homes to clients where they bake or toast bread right before the viewing. This is known to subtly instill a sense of domestic ownership on prospective tenants.