Faculty 2015

Artist Statement

This work reflects one of Pittsburgh’s most famous landmarks, the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, which features unique nationality rooms highlighting different cultures from around the world. This piece consists of a geometric structure that partially resembles a fragment of that building. The cardboard structure is extended and the inside is both dark and light, with outside sound being filtered, therefore allowing the space to become like a small classroom that also resembles a capsule. I encourage people to initiate small workshops, events and meetings that can be held inside this work, preferably when ruminating over the idea of renewing our ideas for the future. There is space for approximately 20 visitors inside.

The nationality rooms at the Cathedral of Learning reflect distinctive different heritages, but in this room the nationality is undefined. Visitors will have their own associations and will interpret layers of the work in their own way. The space both points toward and reflects on the future, and also encourages stimulation, contemplation and reflection on themselves and their own ideas. Certain elements within the work, like the recycled materials and the way the concept of learning has been visualized, also reflect on issues regarding ecology and sustainability, and the financial and global structures that must be revisited and renewed over the coming decades. Faculty is a mixture of utopia, destruction and beauty, and combines the romanticism of the log cabin with its antithesis – the implied malevolence of the Unabomber’s cabin. This space is a hybrid between dwellings, caves, the primitive hut and cathedrals.