Welcome Home, my senior installation-based project, was founded on the idea of home.

The exhibition's thesis was sparked one night with a conversation around the dinner with my grandparents. I asked them about the games they played as children. In my family, whether it was board games or word games, my family’s love for games turned into a long-standing tradition of game nights when we were all together. The idea that games could connect us to one another while simultaneously connecting me to my grandparents’ unfamiliar childhood was the foundation for this project. This is an extension of home.  

I set out to recontextualize a game they played as kids. With chopsticks, a portion of sand, and rubber bands, my grandparents would compete in digging for rubber bands with the utensils. The person who acquired the most rubber bands won a small cash prize!

I centered my installation around this sandbox game while adding other exhibits of my childhood around it, turning the gallery into a space that felt like home as the viewer stepped into the space, they were being warmly invited home, whatever that may be for them. My grandparents wonderfully facilitated the game with visitors as this was an invitation for them to gather around the table and inform this space of invitation and ‘welcoming.’ This dynamic was important as ‘home’ for me involved my grandparents and my goal was that friends, extended family, and strangers would also feel the warmth and hospitality that they have so graciously extended to me. 

It is the people interacting with the art that made this show what it was. The pieces could only be activated by the bodies, interactions, and curiosities: much like home life is and should be. 

With additional elements of my childhood, the gallery became a space that felt like a home not only for me but for everyone involved. It is the people interacting with the art that made this show what it was. The pieces could only be activated by the bodies, interactions, and curiosities: much like home life is and should be.