Cast Aways
Newsprint, paint, collected furniture from the surrounding neighborhood
Video, Installation and Performance
590 sq. ft.
Within the installation, discarded furniture from the streets is cast into the walls of an iconic row house in Houston's historic community. Using basic papier-mâché techniques the furniture is blanketed in white and the objects that once contained a history and energy become non-functional obstructions in space. The papier-mâché process presents a format that is not only economical and accessible but historically prominent in the use of castings made for the human body. By casting discarded objects that community members once owned, a shell or negative is produced. The new form abandons the material quality of the object but retains the memory of its physical presence. This project wrestles with the probability of loss when the physical qualities of a neighborhood and the memory of its people quickly disappear through the act of gentrification.
