US National Exhibit for the Prague Quadriennial for Performance Design and Space

Sponsored by the USITT

Executive Director: Laura Lee Everett 

President: Carolyn Satter

Exhibit Design: Yoon Bae, Scott Bolman, Luke Cantarella, Anna Driftmier, Richard Hoover, Stan Mathabane, Tanya Orellana

IPad Interface Design: Orsolya Szantho, Attilio Rigotti

Digital Curator: Ian Garrett

Curators: Loyce Arthur, Scott Blackshire, Alejandro Fajardo, Rafael Jaen, Josafath Reynoso, Jim Streeter, Susan Tsu, Soledad Sanchez Valdez, Christina Watanabe

Associate Curators: Richard Bryant, Greg Cook, William Kenyon, Adam Mendelson, Rob Eastman-Mullins, Sabrina Notarfrancisco, Joe Pino, Loren Schreiber, Carl Walling, Tatyana Wilds

Artistic Director: Kevin Rigdon

Head Curator: Tatiana Vintu

Chair of International Activies: Patrick Rizzotti

This exhibit has been engineered, constructed, and installed by faculty, staff, and students in

the School of Theatre at Florida State University

Technical Director: Jim Lile

FSU: Joshua Wickham, Todd Wren, Colin Campbell

Graduate students: Zachary Cary, Kendra Drew, Danielle Gonzalez

Victoria Guise, Payton Nugent, Wesley Seiderman

Rebecca Stock, Raistlin Yovan

Special Thanks: 4 Wall Entertainment

United States of America, 2023 reclaimed wood, cotton, acrylic, wire cloth, video

What does home mean to you? How do you make a home, and how does home make you who you are? This house-like structure features a two-channel video installation showing 28 design projects made by designers who identify as having a home in the United States of America. The projects are juxtaposed with the designers’ response to the question “What does home mean to you? ” What intersections and connections can you see between a designer’s identity and their work?

In the United States, a home is a symbol of the “American dream”. It shows the fractured assemblage of geography and place, politics and power, poverty and wealth that make up the nation. Simultaneously, the home is a signifier of self – of ethnicity, family, language and culture. It offers a lens on the work of these individual designers and a refraction of the multiplicity that forms the U.S. theatrical design landscape.

The structure of Our Home is built from floorboards salvaged from a Florida house most likely build in the 1920s. This form, echoing the vernacular domestic architecture of the U.S., is then embellished with a complex knotted fabric surface created by hooking strips of fabric to a wire mesh. The fabric strips were cut from old theatrical dropcloths and costumes collected from theaters across the U.S. The paneling on the inside of the structure is contact-printed with images collaged from the design projects shown above.

An environmentally-conscious approach to material collection, by gathering and repurposing objects, asks the viewer to see design as an act of critical engagement with the world.