Homebody

MoAH: Museum of Art and History
October 21 – December 26, 2021
Lancaster

From the exhibition announcement:

With Homebody, Chelsea Dean shines a light on the affinities and tensions between everyday domestic objects and the sociological and architectural structures they occupy. Dean thoughtfully composes new relationships that are both playful and phenomenological; reinvigorating cognitive and bodily interactions. The works in this exhibition uncover interstitial meaning generated between things when they are in relationship with each other. By energetically intervening and abstracting cast off, lost, or abandoned objects, Dean gives them new life, where they become tender and personal once more under her care.

Dean’s practice analyzes the psychological and sociological fallout of Mid Century American design and architecture. Many of her artworks are made of objects scavenged from abandoned Jackrabbit Homesteads, a 1930s government-sanctioned housing boom (and speedy bust) that encouraged settlers to develop the harsh landscape of the Mojave Desert with promise of home and land ownership. Like the Levittown development in Pennsylvania, or the Case-Study Houses of Los Angeles, these structures exist as historical remainders. They are physical manifestations of American social transformations —including collapse— that grew out of 20th century American ideals of an industrious life, personal liberty and property ownership.

The work in Homebody animates and illuminates the challenge of living through these epochs of social transformation by reworking the personal, private objects which are vehicles for those experiences. Adornments for the home and the body appear throughout the exhibition, including furniture remnants, building materials, jewelry, mirrors, and gold leaf. Her assemblages make space for reflection, not only of the moments that define us socially, but also the ways in which we puzzle our way through and make meaning in life.