The project
The project starts with a trigger:
A Home means our whole world. It's not just a place to stay or a shelter; it's where we show ourselves completely. The house observes and encapsulates all these truths. There is a strong connection between us and the place.
The house speaks about us and reflects our engagement with the world. All these individual homes together make up the grand house, the one we all share, our community.
My art project invites everyone to reflect and explore how we can express our homes by cutting a template paper house and decorating it as we wish. Trying to express how is our Home. And how your home reflects who we are.
Then, it's about sharing that with others. To do this, I have created a special 2D corner inside the store and Gallery Clevedon Creatives +Co to display all the paper houses already decorated. Our Homes!
The motivation behind the idea
Back at one of my first exhibitions, I created a piece called House vs. Home. I was just starting to build my own family at the time, and it was a significant moment for me. The best way I could express what was happening in my life was through art. My main reflection was that it doesn’t matter how a house looks; the most important thing is how I make it a home—a place where I feel content, at peace, and able to keep growing.
The piece featured all different kinds of buildings that we can say are houses. Trying to reflect that one thing is the building, other the Home.
The concept of home has come up again because, after almost 10 years in New Zealand, I’m finally ready to call this country my home. Yet, the connection to my roots and the feeling of distance are always present in my mind. Like many immigrants who choose to live far from their home countries, it’s a significant and brave process—one that I’m still working through.
This time, I wanted to invite others to express what truly makes a house a home. I still believe that it doesn’t matter what the building looks like; it’s what we carry inside us that makes it a home.
How was the participation in the installation
During the exhibition, participants could collect the paper House template at Clevedon Creatives + Co, from the Franklin Art Center, or download it from the website. They were encouraged to decorate the template as they thought best, reflecting how they could represent their homes.
During that time, there was a special 2D intervention inside the store, where participants were able to:
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Place their House.
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Admire the other Houses created by the community
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Interact in the space and take a picture inside the intervention with the 2D objects
Step by Step
More than 200 copies were printed for everyone to enjoy
This project was made possible thanks to the special invitation from Clevedon Creatives + Co,
the support of Franklin Art Centre, and the funding from the Franklin Local Board.