Abstract of Project

This project focuses on the dangers of women living alone. First of all, according to the data from office for national statistics, with the growth of the population living alone in recent years, there are more and more cases related to the murder of women living alone and sexual harassment. Therefore, women living alone are a group that needs to be valued and cared by the society. Secondly, I have had a similar experience myself – walking alone and being followed. When I see similar social news, I can sympathize with it. Through research, I find that most women have experienced this danger more or less. Therefore, I want to create an immersive exhibition that allows people to experience the dangers that women living alone face in their daily lives.

Conclusion

This project aims to draw public attention to the dangers faced by women living alone in their daily lives. Spatially, the project explores what kinds of spaces make women living alone feel at risk? What kind of spatial experiences allow people to experience the dangers faced by women living alone from their perspective? I explored this mainly through interviews, collecting photographs and making simple models.

Firstly, I collected photographs of five women living alone on their way home and asked them to describe in detail how they felt about the spaces that frightened them on their way home. Then, we analysed the type of spaces that frightened them. What elements were present? Through the exploration of the model, I found that there are four types of spaces that frighten women living alone: narrow and long spaces, wide and low and sheltered spaces, staircases and dark spaces. So narrow, long spaces, wide, low and sheltered spaces form the basis of my exhibition.

Structure of Space

For the spatial structure, I extracted the nodes from the paths of the five women who live alone and folded them with origami to create a route to their homes. And overlapping these 5 spatial structures, the acute angle element was extracted. And sharp-angled spaces can also be uncomfortable. So I used sharp angles in my spatial structure.

This exhibition uses the element of mirrors to penetrate the whole space. Mirrors have the function of extending space and blurring the boundaries of space, and I wanted to use this element to create a disorienting and tense atmosphere for the exhibition.

Exhibition Installation

And for an exhibition installation that allows people to experience the dangers of living alone as a woman. Firstly, I extracted four behaviours from the responses of those five interviewees that frightened them: Be followed, Be peeped and monitored, A stranger knocks at the door for no reason and Verbal and physical harassment. Because it is difficult to express behaviours in space. So I wanted to show it in the form of art. I designed four experiences from four behaviours that frighten women living alone, so the gallery was divided into four spaces. One behaviour corresponds to the experience of a spatial installation.

The first gallery is for people to experience being surrounded by others suffering from verbal harassment. The material of the entire hexagonal prism is disturbingly mirrored. When the viewer enters the installation and stands in the centre of the hexagonal prism, the viewer’s figure is reflected, elongated, shortened or distorted. Coupled with the unpleasant verbal harassment playing through the headphones, one develops a sense of being surrounded by people speaking evil words.

The second gallery allows people to experience the sensation of being trailed. Based on the mirrored space, I have hung many lenses of different sizes and angles. As people walk through them, they can only see parts of other people’s bodies or their own bodies. Wherever the viewer goes, there is a mirror reflecting their own shadow. Because of the size of the mirror, they can only see part of their own shadow walking with them, as if they are being followed by someone else, but you cannot see the full picture of the stalker, which is unsettling.

The third gallery allows one to experience what it is like to peer and be peered at. The space is a long corridor that gets narrower and narrower as you go, and the installation is made up of cameras and corresponding peepholes. The device has two parts, the peephole is on the left and the camera is on the right. As the viewer looks into the peephole they see their own backside. This space gets progressively narrower the closer the camera gets to the people. This is like the feeling of being pried into the privacy of another person, making the viewer feel nervous and uncomfortable.

The fourth gallery focuses on the dangers of doors and windows in the living spaces of women living alone. I have therefore created a transitional and deconstructive structure from window to door. The exhibition space consists of seven mirrors with different openings. These seven mirrors are fan-shaped and the openings gradually become larger, moving from ‘windows’ to ‘doors’. When the viewer enters the space, they first see the ‘window’ and then the opening gradually becomes a ‘door’ as one moves around. The person’s perspective also changes from standing outside the window to standing in the door.

This last space is the exit of the gallery and is positioned at the centre of the exhibition space, like an observer or monitor, so I wanted to reflect this with the material of the two way mirror, through which people can look back at all the galleries they have experienced along the way. This space is invisible to the viewer in the other spaces, and it is also like a twist at the end of the film, where someone is standing in this space watching their every move while the viewer is experiencing it in the original gallery. It also serves as a reminder of the dangers faced by women living alone and the ubiquity of voyeurism in their lives.