Designed by Aiden McGorry, Lauren Li, and Lillian Zhao
Advisor: Rebecca L Farnum, human geographer
Identity Unboxed is a multimedia installation reflecting on boundaries, thresholds, and diasporic identities. Collaboratively created by a trio of multicultural architecture students, the piece invites the broader Syracuse community to consider the interplay between public space, private experiences, and personal identities.
By installing a large-scale art piece in the heart of the architecture department’s physical home, 'Identity Unboxed' intrudes on a familiar space, encouraging everyone – including those of majority status – to more critically examine questions of self, community, and connection.
Identity Unboxed reflects the multicultural tapestry of every viewer, because cultural identity belongs to all of us. Identity politics, minority statuses, and power inequalities can make individuals feel fragmented, especially in majority spaces. Naming the many layers of identity that we all possess can help create connections between all who inhabit the spaces we create.
This installation is not a traditional art piece, meant only for static viewing. It is a communal reflection on personal and public identities, inspired and informed by architectural practices - and it invites its audience to be co-creators. Experience this installation in motion. Move through it. Move around it. Look up and down. Run around it, then step between the layers. Pull the fabric apart. Layer pieces together. Hold them up to the light. Let the fabric go, and retrace your steps. Create a new path. Return another day, and see how the piece has transformed.
As you interact with this piece, think about how the various colors cast changing hues on each other, the built environment, and the people within it. How do they transform as you move them? How does your position change what they look like? How is your perception altered when others inhabit the space?
The installation starts as a pristine white box. It is up to you – and to us as a collective – to make it something worth viewing / to give it meaning / to recreate it and ourselves.
