Ramona Poenaru
Home sweet home - Installation - 2009
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 11
Installation
A space enclosed between four walls resembling a standard living-cum-dining-room. in spite of the small number of elements present, the décor is very elaborate, oppressive even. A thick fitted carpet muffles the sound, wallpaper lines the walls, furniture typical of a domestic interior fills it. this is not a place to live in, it is pure artifice, a mental place. It is in fact a house, "the most important place in the world," as a slogan for a popular brand of interior design has it, but also a place fraught with dangers, because, beneath the veneer of homeliness, here terrible violence can ensue. Entering the dwellingplace, we explore the conflicts it shelters, it conceals. various elements from the domestic environment are invested with a power to express the memory of the excesses they have witnessed. As visitors pass through various hotspots in the space the troubled past of the room is revealed in image and sound. three videos are projected at key sites on the set represented on a one-to-one scale: the same object or place is viewed -- but at another time, as through a gap in the present. it is a place which refers to itself, a closed loop. A scene where it is the viewer who trigger fictitious, latent memories.
