Reading and researching site specificity and forensic architecture inspired me to submit a proposal to ArtStreet, an M5Arts project. While the location is undisclosed, the application is to make temporary work in a 55,000 square foot building. The project will be open to the public for three week before the building will be demolished. My work was to focus on the writing of the proposal, since I have never done any work resembling this.
I envision an institutional museum-type space, in the center of which I will construct a 10 foot square defined by a white picket fence protecting a living bright green lawn whose scent fills the air. I will execute this concept after investigating the space, painting the walls and ceiling bright white, adding artificial daylight, constructing the white picket fence and the padlocked gate, and placing sod on an inch of soil. On one wall, a decorative frame with a photograph of the building itself will hang and a freestanding mailbox near the entry. During the construction and exhibition period, I will use a portable sprayer to hand water the lawn, 3 times weekly or as needed.
I want to visually communicate and raise questions on a multitude of levels through the placement of this impenetrable fenced bright green lawn growing in an institutional space, and the mailbox reference home within the ephemeral ArtStreet context. I am stirred by thoughts and feelings of exclusion, loss, inequality, the American dream, neighborhood, community, place, history and water shortage along with wonder and appreciation for lawns’ green beauty and the life supporting breath they gives. I am questioning and honoring this idealized greenery by intentionally placing it in this context with its authoritative inherent message—this is art, this is history, this is worth preserving. The photograph of the building mimics this message and reminds me of the here and now.