Sunny Valley Oaks Manor
2024
Installation
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, uncomfortable images 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 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 surrogate for failing memory) from a nursing supply closet.
My grandma‘s name is Susan. She has not responded to my texts in 3 years.
Materials
![pamphlet created for exhibtion, text added over to a blurred version of a specific nursing home pamphlet]()
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2024
Installation
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, uncomfortable images 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 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 surrogate for failing 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.
- Doilies left behind in Lorna’s room.
- Institution-safe vase from Ana.
