HOME IS A CONCEPT

THESIS PROJECT @Pratt Institute

Spring 2024 | Drawing, Illustration, Graphic Design, Printmaking, Book Design
Instructor: Chang Park

Awards:
Communication Arts 2024 - Illustration Shortlist
3x3 International Illustration Show No.22 - Merit

“What do you think of when you think of home? Which location shows up in your mind?”

When people ask or mention the term “your home” to me, nothing immediately comes in my mind immediately. Usually, it will take me a few seconds, and I always end up thinking about the place I shared with my mom back in my hometown. But the picture is still blurry, sometimes even glitching in my mind, like an old television. Later I realized that it was because I lived in so many places throughout my life. By the time someone asked about my home, pictures of all the places that I used to live in, or that I used to call home overlap and collapse together.

Taking away the meaning and emotions, home goes back to its original form: a refuge that solely exists as an object produced by many rational ideas, such as science, physics, and engineering. Humans have the limitless ability and power to give other things meaning. An old saying like “Home is where the heart is” gives us some hint into the connection between ourselves and home. However, only a place that is qualified or entitled to the feeling of ease and settling in can be called home.

For my thesis, I want to peel off all the added meanings and values projected onto those objects and use only the most rational and scientific treatment of image-making to reconstruct the spaces upon the land of memory. They are the shelters made of concrete, and we fill the four walls with our emotions. They are the vessels that contain our origins, self-esteem, emotions, memories, lessons, and reasons that made us human.

The ultimate purpose of my thesis project is to invite audiences to think about their perception of home. How, and why, do we add attachments and meaning to certain places rather than others?

Ideas are visualized through three layers of examination: architectural spaces, objects within the spaces,and human interactions happened inside the spaces.

CHAPTER 1: HOME AS VESSEL

“Taking away the assigned meaning and attached emotion, the concept of the home collapsed into this illusion of an architectural vessel.”

Based on personal experience growing up and living in different cities, there are many places that I have called home. Especially from the aspect of my parents’ different origins, I used to have some confusion about identity at certain levels. Reflecting on my connections and bonds with my family from different sides, as well as the families that formed among my friends and me, I gradually developed a vague conceptual understanding of a permanent home.
When the home lost its attribution of relationship and bonds, it was just a concept, or a container that shelters the flesh body at night. We may call somewhere as home just because it is the place we sleep at night, but we won’t call a hotel as home. But for the distant ones, or the ones we don’t regularly go to, we still prefer those as home. The involvement of emotion and bond still effects our perception and understanding, as well as the attitude we are holding.
Starting to conceptualize the idea of home as vessel in this way, I realized that not only home contains or shelters our body, it also storage our emotion, identity, the time we spend inside the physical space, our relationship and interactions we have with other people inside, even our connection to the physical object of bed, dinning table, balcony, walls, and kitchenware.

* This series was selected in Communication Arts 2024 Illustration Shortlist

CHAPTER 2: NOMADIC FRAGMENTS

Objects within the architectural spaces. Rearranging and reorganizing architectural spaces based on many dorms throughout my primary school, middle school, high school, and college

CHAPTER 3: KEY FRAMES

“The home is a vessel for memories. Humans create memories and memories consititute humans. The keyframes of memories reproduce and reorganize themselves, overlapping with each other in similar spaces and architectures.”

Capture memories from the same perspective, look outside through the window, memory fragments reorganized and overlapped.

(click to see each room and 6pm stories )

LETTERPRESS (additional assets*)