White Phonomona

Tasked with producing a portable creative product to be sold and exhibited on a window, I produced a site-specific, semi-permanent installation designed to be consumer-friendly and conceptually relevant to current events.

This piece was initially inspired by the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement protests triggered in part by the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin. The murder sparked protests against police brutality, evidently targeting people of colour. This event triggered a further global questioning of the effects of racism in society, centred in the Western world. The movement inspired me to explore uprising in my work, and what it means to have to set your teeth against a hostile world.

The spiked geometric visual is inspired by the observations of the author and philosopher Zora Neale Hurston, who says “I feel most coloured when I am thrown against a sharp white background”. This quotation resonated with me, and directed my experiments with form and colour towards a white aesthetic and visceral discomfort. I considered how a lack of understanding was a contributing factor to the ongoing issue of systematic racism. White communities being was less likely to identify racist encounters and behaviours if they had not witnessed, experienced, or had a loved one experience discriminatory behaviour.

Installation close up:

Working in paper and card to keep it light, portable, and cheap to produce, I made an installation that could be adapted and displayed in any location, when provided with an environment’s dimensions. I folded the paper into geometric nets to give the paper a solid appearance, despite its delicate and fragile characteristics. Using the hexagon as a base I developed an equation that allowed it to adapt to any area with infinite combinations, heights and patterns. The hexagon lattice would then fully cover the environment as a result. The flat nets fold to make variations of paper pyramids, sharp and tooth like. This made the space unapproachable due to their numbers and size. A mass of sharp white forms developed blocking access to any facilities surroundings which indefinitely reserved the seemingly surreal and inhospitable space for these forms.

Due to the recent Pandemic of 2020 -21, when self-isolating people relied on their windows to interact with the outside world. The instalment denies access to this interaction, allowing the instalment to dominate and those on either side of the window to remain aggressively separated.

Tonal study:

The hexagon form that I used was initially inspired by insect societies such as bees, that thrive as a collective. Much like bees, alone these individual hexagonal pyramids are limited in their function. Only when put together, surrounded by similar entities, do they strengthen and increase their presence, free to perpetuate the pattern without challenge.

On further inspection however, the flimsy foundations of the seemingly domineering form become apparent as they gradually crumbling because they are nothing more than paper, air and bleached dry pulp. Doomed to disappear with time.

Go to instagram to see all the images of this installation.

Installation from interior: