For you and your loved ones
2024
Installation
A study, conducted through interviews of people over 65 found that the two most common greatest fears of seniors were losing independence (26% of seniors) and being put in a nursing home (12% of seniors). In contrast, only 3% of seniors listed death as their greatest fear.
I have searched hundreds of different care facilities. My grandma is in a nursing home. Her nursing home’s website contains 81 images. A care-professional is shown touching an elderly person in 24 of those pictures.
Nursing homes are placed in an impossible position in their advertising imagery, needing to simultaneously convey independence to the potential resident, and safety and care to the resident’s loved ones; often within the same image. These unreal, uncomfrtable images convey almost nothing indevidually, but as a group--as one scrolls through thousands of these pictures, they become unsettlingly uiquitous, and part of a world where touch fluctuates between care and control, and body position mimics both freindship and assistance.
This project, pulling from visual sociology, analyzed the first 1000 images that included at lease one person in search results from nursing homes.The installation included 1000 small images, a research paper in the form of an nursing home pamphlet, personal possessions pulled from my grandmother, items left behind by nursing care residents, and sticky notes (often a failing surrogate memory) from a nursing supply closet.
My grandma‘s name is Susan. She has not responded to my texts in 3 years.
Materials
2024
Installation
A study, conducted through interviews of people over 65 found that the two most common greatest fears of seniors were losing independence (26% of seniors) and being put in a nursing home (12% of seniors). In contrast, only 3% of seniors listed death as their greatest fear.
I have searched hundreds of different care facilities. My grandma is in a nursing home. Her nursing home’s website contains 81 images. A care-professional is shown touching an elderly person in 24 of those pictures.
Nursing homes are placed in an impossible position in their advertising imagery, needing to simultaneously convey independence to the potential resident, and safety and care to the resident’s loved ones; often within the same image. These unreal, uncomfrtable images convey almost nothing indevidually, but as a group--as one scrolls through thousands of these pictures, they become unsettlingly uiquitous, and part of a world where touch fluctuates between care and control, and body position mimics both freindship and assistance.
This project, pulling from visual sociology, analyzed the first 1000 images that included at lease one person in search results from nursing homes.The installation included 1000 small images, a research paper in the form of an nursing home pamphlet, personal possessions pulled from my grandmother, items left behind by nursing care residents, and sticky notes (often a failing surrogate memory) from a nursing supply closet.
My grandma‘s name is Susan. She has not responded to my texts in 3 years.
Materials
- Blank sticky notes from nursing supplies.
- doctored nursing home pamphlet
- The first 1,000 person-images in a google search for “nursing home”
- Porcelain horse from Guy’s room.
- Institution-safe vase from Ana.
- Doilies left behind in Lorna’s room.