The house that built me
Fabrizio, Mia
2020
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I am consumed with hidden and exposed structure,
both architectural and social. My investigation of physical construction, cultural
constructs, and their interrelationship originates from the framework most familiar to
me: the house in which I grew up. Our family home is fifteen miles outside of
Philadelphia’s center, in a former steel mill town where European immigrants of
the early ... read more1900s—particularly Irish, Polish, and Italian—settled. In the
mid-1950s, my Italian American grandfather remodeled this 3-story family house into a
multi-use structure that serves as a home and a family-run business. The smells of perm
solution and fresh tomato gravy have mingled for four generations. Still today, only
three steps separate the handcrafted hair salon from our kitchen table. I merge
painting, collage, printmaking, sculpture, and installation to create both two- and
three-dimensional artwork that deconstructs and recreates this space. There is an
emphasis on memory as I adhere, carve, and chip away at wallpaper, plywood, drywall,
paneling, and objects. Patterns are interrupted and fall apart. Through materiality and
process, I aim to relate a sense of fluidity between feminine and masculine, public and
private, and modern and traditional. The physical layering of materials alludes to the
emblematic layers of people and to the layers that compose immigrant culture over time.
The work is a map of comprehension. By peeling away facades and breaking down
constructs, my intention is to question the systems that are accepted and perpetuated as
normal, to cast away the prescribed, and to free the spirit of the
individual.
MFA Thesis 2020read less - ID:
- 9p290q420
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