Art Object: Disrupting the notion of home

Home is traditionally perceived as the inviolable place of the family, evoking all the notions of warmth, security and belongingness. The house outside the city most especially aspires to a picture of contemplative bliss: the slanting roof, the sprawling lawn, the white picket fence. When we say, “home is where the heart is,” we try to sound earnest, not ironic.

And why should it be otherwise? Where else but in our homes do we feel safe, loved and protected? As the shell that encloses our private life, doesn’t the home allow us the utmost freedom to be ourselves?

If you drop by at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila (BSP Complex, Roxas Blvd. Manila) anytime from today until Sept. 15, you will see the travelling exhibit, “Come In: Interior Design as a Contemporary Art Medium in Germany” that proposes an evaluation of what we call as home. By using familiar objects—furniture, décor, architectural elements— that belong to this innocuous domestic sphere, the artworks disrupt our notion of togetherness, habitation and sense of comfort. 

In Johannes Spehr’s “Untitled (cubicle/lookout),” we find a semblance of room that doubles as a sleeping quarter and working station, with ink drawings of Germany ’s everyday life covering the walls. Spartan and claustrophobic, the installation piece is really a cell from where the viewer is confined like a prisoner for a moment and is only allowed to see the external world through slits, provoking the idea of comfortable isolation. Doesn’t the home for some not only become a refuge but a permanent escape?

Take the work of Eric Shcmidtz, “Do not Disturb” which is a photo wallpaper of an opulent home “graffitied” with camouflage and the big bold letters that say DO NOT DISTURB. What could have been an inviting living space has been militarized and is blocked from view, antagonizing the onlooker, not unlike the “magazine truths” as the artist calls it, referring perhaps to the succulent interiors found in glossies that are, alas, inaccessible and unrepeatable and only inspire envy.

Personal space is confronted by the works “Reception Room” by Dorothee Golz, “Untitled (Cola-light sculpture)” by Stefan Kern and “Drehstuhlobjekt (Revolving chair)” by Heide Deigert where the chairs don’t isolate but instead force people to be squeezed together, if only to evoke the sense of discomfort and the awareness that distance is necessary in casual as well as personal interactions.

Perhaps the most remarkable among them (being right in the center of the exhibition room) is Bjorn Dahlem’s “Club Betaflor” which reflects a lounge consisting of “several elements, or modules, with a certain furniture flair, but of doubtful utility value.” The artist envisions the work as a place with which to think “the problems inherent in the existence of…gateways to other dimension.” The charm of the piece is that it’s meant to be fictive and humorous, the videos—all three of them—drawing and implicating us in the experiment:  home as a laboratory.

Doubtless there are other ways with which to read the artworks that are conceptual in nature and readily convey a host of ideas and interpretations. But the heart of the project, according to the curator Renate Goldmann is to “try to position (the artists’) objects inherent in art and try to analyse the relationship between the form and function, design and ornamentation, mere existence and usefulness of their artefacts.” 

This is prompted by the fact that “art, architecture, furniture and interior design have made many cross-over statements on how we should appoint our homes.” With each having its own unique vocabulary, it’s not surprising that the end result—the hybrid to all of these cross-references—is a dwelling place that is iconoclastic, eccentric, post-modern.

The fact that these works are within the walls of Metropolitan Museum and organized by the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations allows us to examine them more closely and be ready recipients to the potential ideas that they may inspire. Context is key. Offered a refreshing take on what art means—it’s not that frequent that we encounter a conceptual exhibition of this magnitude and variety—we stake our claim in the contemporary dialogue by examining our beliefs, opinions and sympathies.

What anyone should not lose sight of when viewing these works is that they are informed by the unique history, experiences and points of view of the German artists. They don’t have to feel readily accessible. In fact, some of them are decidedly alienating, if we are to go by the artists’ statements on their works. With this in mind, we can appreciate them as providing alternatives to our habits of thinking. It’s up to us whether to accept or reject them.