Dark Spaces - Festering Imagination

Kaylin Hodson

Degree: BFA

Area: Printmaking

Thesis Statement

The closet has always been a universal source of anxiety and fear for young children. With the door wide open, the deep dark space leaves room for childhood curiosity to fester. This installation exemplifies the remembrance of child imagination into a concrete space. As an adult, the dark space in a closet can be less suspenseful, but not completely uninteresting. The memories of childhood fears still linger in the space but manifest themselves in the light of our current adult worries. The neon distortion of the common childhood object is utilized to exemplify the reflection of childhood apprehensions as an adult. These contorted pictures of stuffed animals overlap and cave in on each other inside the space, overtaking the closet. In this takeover, they mask the defining features of the closet in order to strip it of its functionality. In this manner, the closet begins to host the worries that have always been associated with it. The once friendly images of stuffed animals turn into an exploration of the anxiety a closet can hold. In this work the closet becomes an intimate space for the viewer to stop and sit with their own fears.