Exhibition Info
Through installation, sculpture, and socially-engaged projects, Jenny Polak: Homeward Bound addresses the effects of state-sanctioned violence, mass incarceration, and immigration detention in the United States and abroad.Trained as an architect, Jenny Polak draws on the language of interior design and domesticity to address the effects of state-sanctioned violence, mass incarceration, and immigration detention in the United States and abroad. The sculptures, installations, and socially-engaged projects in Homeward Bound materialize as domestic objects infused with imagery of borders and prisons, mapping the home as a site of labor, longing, and the potential for radical hospitality.
The works featured in the exhibition – including backsplash tiles, custom wallpaper, porcelain tableware, pennants, and model banquettes – disrupt the line between the domestic and the foreign. Whether expressing solidarity with migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, or uplifting those who have been directly impacted by mass incarceration, Polak explores how the structures and politics of borders and prisons shape everyday life and notions of home for millions around the globe. Polak’s work underlines the ways our sense of safety and belonging are collectively marked by inequality – an inequality that can be fought at home. Together, the works in Homeward Bound press on the real and imagined boundaries of the domestic space, revealing a powerful opportunity for shared acts of reparation.
Jenny Polak: Homeward Bound is curated by Maria McCarthy, Curatorial Associate.
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