Handcrafted paper models
When I was three years old, I used to roam around my parents’ office with curiosity, fear, and confusion. As someone who grew up in their workspace there were places and objects that were off limits for me to enter to touch. My family owned a prominent lumber business in Thailand - a place I would subconsciously revisit in my sleep time after time. In my dream, I regret to my three-year-old self; playing in my parents’ office, longing to open those forbidden doors. Today, those offices that were once my playground are now an abandoned plot of land. Through sculptural models and photographs, I seek to re-inhabit the mysterious and unknowing vision of my childhood by reconstructing my labyrinthine office corridor of dreams and memories of those places. Looking back at these memories from a new perspective helps reunite me with a past that has always eluded me — the secrets behind those unopened doors that are now just a plot of land.
Pictures of buildings can be a bit like portraits of people: they can represent the personalities of their subjects in ways that are specific to each individual subject. From our observations of people, we presume to know something about their personalities, but it takes more than a quick glance to have a deeper comprehension of who someone is. We need to get to know them. These conjoined homes were built to be identical, with no individually identifying characteristics. The inhabitants, over a period of time, have modified their houses in ways that convey their own idiosyncrasies and distinctive traits, their characters. In this way, we may find in some of these pictures of houses aspects of what amounts to portraiture.
In New York City, there are people everywhere. A few try to talk to me, but most ignore me, I observe them all. There are only some people that I look at. It is because they are doing something different from everybody else. While everyone is moving fast, rushing to work or meetings, there are some people who stop against the flow. They are the ones that catch my attention. It could be that I am looking for someone like me, who isolates themselves from the surrounding world. I observe them as time moves. As if there is just us: me and that person and everyone else becomes blurry.
Designer Audrey O'brien
