The idea of home is complex, one layered with nuance. What might evoke a feeling of joy for one might provoke little emotional response from another or even prove a traumatic trigger for someone else. In other words, we experience home differently; but no matter our relationship, it is an intrinsic human need. Food. Fire. Shelter. Love.
We at cityhomeCOLLECTIVE are firm believers in the exploration of home, no matter its manifestation, and we love to collaborate with others who share this same passion. Folks like the beautiful souls at UMOCA. For years, we have shown up together to celebrate the arts, but this time it’s personal, this time we are partnering on something very near and dear to our hearts. That’s right: home.
“Haimaz, Heimr, Hjem, Ham, Home” is UMOCA’s upcoming exhibition and focuses on the full spectrum of home. Created by Jared Steffensen, UMOCA’s Curator of Exhibitions, the exhibition takes the idea that ‘house’ is something more than a roof and four walls and delves deep into what it means to be sheltered, both physically and psychologically. As Jared so eloquently puts it, “This exhibition seeks to explore the notion of homes that are real, constructed, remembered, displaced, damaged as well as those imagined. In a time of so much instability, home can mean both a feeling of belonging and connection within a community as well as a place of danger, of loneliness, confinement and trauma.”
UMOCA’s Executive Director Laura Allred Hurtado told us the artwork in the exhibition includes sculptures, video and photography, and the installation investigates themes of nostalgia, longing, displacement, accessibility, community, and gathering. She says, “In organizing this exhibition, Jared worked to really understand all facets of what it means to be home and to discover artists whose practices offered a complex and compelling investigation of the subject. The exhibition’s title looks at the various translations and roots of the word, and organizes itself around one of the original meanings of home, which is ‘a place where souls gather.’”
In the foreword of The Poetics of Space, philosopher Gaston Bachelard asks,"How does the body, not merely the mind, remember the feel of a latch in a long-forsaken childhood home? If the house is the first universe for its young children, the first cosmos, how does its space shape all subsequent knowledge of other space, of any larger cosmos?
Is that house ‘a group of organic habits’ or something deeper, the shelter of the imagination itself?"
Amen, Gaston. Your words are an inspiration for us all. I asked Helena Morozof, cityhome’s design director and one who shares our profound reverence of place, for her perspective on the upcoming exhibition and our partnership in it. "Homes are beyond meaningful,” she says. “They narrate a story about the people who live in them, and there’s a complexity that grants them the quality of being indescribable in just one word.”
A sincere thank you to Laura and Jared and the entire UMOCA crew for their invitation for this joint venture. We are honored to be included and consider the opportunity to participate in this meaningful conversation no small thing. We are also so excited to offer this gift of exploration and contemplation, and we truly hope to see you there. There’s never been a better time to be aware of what home is beyond our own walls.
For more about this upcoming show and how you might attend or contribute, please give us a call at 801.718.5555 or shoot us an email at [email protected] We hope to see you there and in the loving words of our founder Cody Derrick, “wherever we are, may we all be home.”
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