Kabita Das

Public Installation
4.4.2022 // 4.18.2022

Home, Reconstructed is an immersive experience that I created and installed in April 2022. This project addresses the relationship between our understanding of home, space, and how we navigate shared environments.

This project was installed with the support of Boston University’s Kilachand Honors College, the BU Arts Initiative, and the BU Carpentry team.

Interaction 1
Interaction 2
Interaction 3

Artist Statement

The way we understand home is the way we understand space. Depending on how we grow up, and how we experience different versions of what a home can be, we develop different understandings of space. Home is a space to have some ownership over, and the things that we choose to keep there and to surround ourselves with allow us to assert and build around who we are and what we value. This connects to the way that we behave in all spaces because it defines what we are comfortable with and what makes a space suit our needs. It influences how we occupy space beyond our homes, how much of it we’re willing to claim for ourselves, and how much we’ll leave to others. Thus, home and space are not strictly physical things, but rather are concepts that we carry and manifest wherever we go, whether at home, in a classroom, or a conversation.

This project was initially developed for the BU Graphic Design Thesis exhibition, and the Kilachand Honors College symposium in May of 2020. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic came upon us and these events were cancelled and moved online, the project pivoted. What was originally only intended to be an immersive, physical experience, now is also a digital one, homereconstructed.com, that explores all these same ideas.

Both the physical and digital experiences in this project recreate the need to negotiate how we balance personal spaces and shared spaces. The physical installation, with the wooden pieces attached to strings in pairs, creates a multilayered experience for viewers. They can enter the experience, and look closely at the writing and details engraved in the wood, and have a private moment of individual reflection. However, that experience can be interrupted by the presence of another, as both individuals can inadvertently tug on two pieces that are connected by the same string. The digital portion of this project creates a similar experiential environment. There is a common divide in how we navigate our digital world, in which the internet is equated to public space, and the desktop to personal space. In this digital interactive piece, the act of downloading the content from the website onto one’s desktop recreates the feeling of alternating attention, as the viewer must still balance how their public and private worlds are bridged. Furthermore, the act of first downloading, then unzipping the file, and then observing the content entrusted in the viewer, creates a slow, methodical, and intentional experience. Both pieces ultimately encourage participants to think more deeply about how they, as individuals, operate in a space they share with others. The physical and digital negotiations of space that these experiences encourage more broadly connect to the topics of boundaries, space, and home.