Take Out the Trash
This installation is inspired by a poem I wrote called “Withering Flowers.” In this poem, the flowers are a metaphor for unresolved conflict and how it affects my present and future love life. I received these flowers from my ex-boyfriend for prom and kept them in my bathroom ever since. They have degraded over time, and I have never thought to throw them away. The flowers represent this past relationship and how, although I do not always think about him and how the relationship hurt me, it still affects me.
I was inspired to create this bag after attending a talk that focused on conflict resolution. The speaker used the metaphor that leaving conflict unresolved is like never taking out your trash, leaving it to stink up your house. Even if you become nose blind to it, this trash can lead to other problems, like pest and bug infestations that never would have been a problem if you just took out your trash. Similarly, my unresolved conflict can foster resentment within me and cause anxiety toward future relationships.
I wanted to weave the two metaphors of the withering flowers and the festering trash bag together in this project to speak about how this past relationship affects my current views on dating and possibly my future ones. This bag is the manifestation of my internal being as I deal with past conflict. It is the depths of me.
My object is a reversible bag made to resemble a plastic trash bag. The outside of the bag is plain to not only enhance this resemblance but also to show that unresolved conflict can be unassuming. We can become blind and numb to our conflict if we ignore it, making it difficult to see its effects until later.
I lined the inside of the bag with a mixture of cyanotype prints of the dried flowers my ex gave me and the lines of my “Withering Flowers” poem. The bag is also stuffed with other images of the flowers to show that the flowers are the trash that is stinking up my internal landscape. To view this bag completely, one must dig out all the fabric scraps and turn it inside out to view all its contents.
Regarding conflict, internal things must be brought to the light to be assessed and dealt with in order to heal and forgive. You may see signs of a deeper problem pop up in certain situations, like these scraps of flowers, but you do not truly know what is happening internally until you turn yourself inside out, having all your emotions and hidden wounds come to the surface, to thoroughly dissect what is going on.
