INTtalk: FACE-ADE: The Human Landscape with Nina Freedman

FACE-ADE: THE HUMAN LANDSCAPE, an interactive installation, transforms a home facade from an opaque, private threshold into a translucent wall; an intimate vertical ‘skin’. Embedded with diverse hair waste, collected from NYC neighborhood hair salons, the communal collage explores the question, “How do domestic architectural symbols engage dialogue about belonging?”

“Space is relational; the feeling of intimacy, an understanding of perspective, an impatience with location, a sense of 'this is home' and how much is enough. Space holds freedom and choice. Voids are thresholds that we bridge in order to move and change.”

Nina Freedman will be speaking about the process of making FACE-ADE: THE HUMAN LANDSCAPE, an installation, currently being exhibited at the European Cultural Council Art Biennial in Venice, Italy in its 7th Edition of ‘Personal Structures | Beyond Boundaries, through November 24, 2024.

Composed with diverse hair waste collected from New York City neighborhood hair salons, it creates a communal dialogue about transparency and belonging. An operable wall, the installation features a home with a first floor, second floor and attic. Blurring the line between architecture and art, pigmented and transparent bio-resin wall studs, contoured with human profiles, rotate in a wood structure. Embedded with repurposed hair waste from individuals of all genders, ages, and ethnicities, it creates a shared identity; a spatial symbol of tolerance and transparency. Hair in the installation consists of varied curly and straight, short and long, natural and dyed, healthy, fake and damaged. Using the intimate and regenerative layer of hair, it additionally invokes the facade we show in public, exposing the vulnerable, versatile costumed manicure of beauty. How do we reflect on the natural, manufactured or imperfect? The installation encourages viewers to contemplate concealed narratives behind the facades in our neighborhoods. Who are our neighbors? The wall gradually becomes more transparent, symbolizing a gradual revelation of these lives. By standing on both sides of the installation, seen through hair embedded components, it will seem as if visitors are wearing the hair of others. FACE-ADE is about thresholds, borders, home and the neighborhoods we live in. How do we see ourselves in others? How do we, in our differences, live together?

FACE-ADE is generously supported by the New York State Council of the Arts (NYSCA), Pratt Institute School of Design, Pratt Institute Department of Interior Design, The New School and the Puffin Foundation.

Born in New York, Visiting Associate Professor Nina Freedman is an architect, educator and public interdisciplinary installation artist. Following work in the architectural firms of Shigeru Ban, Renzo Piano and Richard Meier, she founded Dreamland Creative Projects, an creative pivot, reframing her previous architectural discipline. She is an educator at Pratt Institute, the New School, and Cornell University NYC AAP, host of the podcast ‘Whereing’, about Belonging, Home and Space and former co-founder of ArchiteXX. A 2024 New York State Council of the Arts (NYSCA) grantee, she is currently exhibiting ‘Face-Ade’ at the European Cultural Center 2024 Art Biennial in Venice, Italy. She holds a Bachelors and Masters of Architecture from the Architectural Association in London and a Bachelors of Landscape Architecture from the City College of New York.Rooted in a background of architecture, her projects and practice use an architectural lens to explore inclusivity and through psycho-spatial boundaries of domestic symbols, and experiences with the personal and collective ‘Home’. This interest in ‘home’ has several scaled layers; The Home with Body, Self, Ancestry, Community, Nation and Earth. Working with physical and emotional thresholds, she is interested in dissolving social, cultural and intergenerational boundaries. Her public installations celebrate norms of privacy in public to create unexpected, inclusive, safe space.

www.dreamlandcreativeprojects.comwww.thewhereing.com

@dreamland_creative_projects

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