Playing House

Abstract

Playing House is a research-creation project that examines how masculinity and queerness are shaped through the aesthetics, objects, and spatial codes of the domestic interior. Stemming from memories of growing up in a home structured by traditional gender expectations, this thesis asks how an illustrative and material practice might negotiate masculinities and reimagine the childhood home as a site of softness, impartial play, and queer possibility. Drawing from feminist and queer theory, autotheory, object theory, and craft studies, it considers how objects and rooms orient bodies toward—or away from—ways of belonging. This project reconstructs memory as a speculative environment through a series of three works: Birch Vignettes, a collection of laser-cut installations that reconstruct childhood rooms; Tufted Troves, hand-tufted objects which transform fragile decor into plush forms; and Suminagashi Schematics, a synthesis of ink marbling, floor plans, and textiles used to speculate on how gender can be reorganized within space. In the process of making, identity is understood as continually renovated, memory as re-codable, shame as capable of softening, and inadequacy as becoming a tool for heutagogy and play.