Project 1: Yours/Mine/Yours (Part 1)
Burak Eceral
Aaron Krach
Critical Studio: Everyday Objects
Project 1: Yours/Mine/Yours (Part 1)
31 March 2021
In this assignment, I interviewed Trinity Ningxi Yeo about her everyday objects and the meaning that lies beneath them. She had multiple collections throughout her lifetime. One of them possesses a special place in her heart which happened to be her duck collection.
Trinity is currently located in Singapore, and she is also a first-year student at Parsons. She has a minimalist taste in decorating her surroundings. Trinity portrays her bedroom covered in all shades of white and lets her surrounding objects create a contrast with their flashy colors. She is currently surrounded by duck-related objects. She explains this interest as a current obsession of hers. This is not the first time she felt obsessive over some item. Growing up, she used to feel the need to collect something, which soon became a hobby of her. She does not limit her collection to any kind of material. The duck form is essential for her. Her collection varies from plushies to the decorative objects, that she made in her art classes, all representative of ducks. Her spiritual bond with ducks goes back to her childhood, especially to a bedtime story that her godmother used to read to her, which had a duck as its main character. She explains this collection as a growing one without any intention. She rejects to go shopping specifically for duck-related items and explains the growth as a work of faith. Her collection almost entirely got built by her friends and family’s gifts, who are aware of Trinity’s interest in ducks. She only purchases the item when she successfully creates a bond with the object and manages to envision a part in her room to display it properly. She looks for objects that she can pair with her personality. So her collection process does not depend on the quantity; she filters them according to their spiritual values. She considers the most valuable items in her duck collection as the ones she personally made. Trinity states that customized items possess a special place in her art because of their uniqueness and the memories of her building them. From her perspective, ducks create a comfort zone where she can reconnect with her childhood and ground herself from the rapid process of becoming a young adult. As a result, she plans to bring a portion of her collection to NYC as she is exciting her childhood room.
Other than her duck collection, back in the day, she collected nano blocks that she used to form shapes out of and display all over her room. Growing up, this obsession of hers left its place to plants. Most specifically, she collected succulents up to the point where she owned about a hundred of them. Also, she used to go on vacation and bring back a suitcase full of succulents, hoping to survive the journey. She is currently storing her collection on her balcony. Besides her collections, Trinity also posses some objects that she considers as charms. For example, she has a silver necklace that was passed on to her by her godmother.
Project 1: Yours/Mine/Yours (Part 2)
Burak Eceral
Aaron Krach
Critical Studio: Everyday Objects
Project 1: Yours/Mine/Yours (Part 2)
7 April 2020
For the second part of the assignment, I envisioned designing a postcard for my partner inspired out her everyday objects, routines, memories, and future hopes. It is a single-paged picturebook telling the story of Trinity’s journey from her childhood room to NYC, which I named “Flying the Nest.” The story has a duck as its main character, walking the viewer through the pilot. The whole concept of a picture book comes from a memory of Trinity’s, her godmother reading her a bedtime story starring a duck. I suspect that this same story might be the indicator for Trinity’s duck collection which pushed me to use duck symbols all over the card. I wanted to incorporate these cherishing childhood memories to symbolize her connection to her past and the current comfort zone she constructed while accommodating in her childhood room during the pandemic. Additionally, during our conversation, we shared a perspective thinking about separating from our collections when the time comes for us to depart to NYC. We noticed that our everyday objects unintentionally form a comfort zone that we will have to escape in several months. Thinking about this situation made me feel nervous about this drastic change, and I thought that Trinity might also feel the same way. So I decided to come up with a city guide that could smooth this transition, and soon I mentioned this theme as the story’s primary message.
At the front of the postcard, we have the correct shipping information on the right-hand side and a set of collages on the left. Here, I wanted to symbolize the current state of Trinity by portraying her bedroom as the first step of her journey. In the interview, she mentions that her room has a minimalistic taste in all shades of white, and her everyday objects, collections, bring the room its color. I wanted to convey the exact opposite of the view for the postcard by shaping a pattern with white ducks on a colorful surface. On top of this pattern, I attached a sticky note with the title of the story written on it. “Flying the Nest” is an idiom for leaving your family behind and starting to stand on your own feet. I found this saying extremely relevant to my context and wanted to use it as the title. This saying also contains the metaphor of flying, so the fact that ducks can partially fly perfectly aligns the overall theme.
The back of the card symbolizes the next step of her journey. Here, we have a set of collages divided into nine main panels, each portraying my favorite destinations in NYC. I thought that mentioning my top destinations hopefully can comfort her during the transition. I found the pictures from an old tour guide and layered them with magazine cutouts to come up with a more hypnotizing and textured image. I also separated the panels using black electrical tape.
