Therapy Bag
interactive soft-sculpture & installation, 2022
For the the touch-deprived,
the bored,
and everyone who wishes to kick some balls.
This interactive installation was created out of discarded textiles and trash. I used discarded materials including unworn and damaged clothing from my own wardrobe and that of friends; leftover textiles and materials from friends' earlier projects; and a lot of trash - including packaging materials, a pillow and random filling materials I collected from the garbage cans in front of our studio.
I used this project as a chance to observe reconnection tendencies in both physical and psychological senses. The two became intertwined through a symbolic approach of associations. Pieces of clothing often play rather important roles in our lives: beyond their protective purposes they also serve as the means of self-expression, identity and personal stories. Through the process of cutting, reorganising and sewing, they inherit new roles as building blocks of an installation and became a semi-blank surface for new stories to be projected onto.
The soft sculpture invited the audience to interact with it through embroidered tags that took a similar shape to price tags on clothing. Reconnection with one own tactile senses took place in a variety of actions and approaches: expressing gentleness, curiosity or anger through hugging, petting, brushing, squeezing or kicking and jumping on the piece.
The Therapy Bag project first met the public on May 26, 2022 at Grid (Prague) during the first Intersensual Resonance show created and curated by Âsûde Alkaya.
Thank you!
