Whats Mine Is Yours
Artist Statement
Tara Rowhani-Farid
A shower is most commonly a place of privacy, where the naked body is exposed and washed; a place that is warm and safe. The stairwells of the Dorrit Black are a harsh opposite. They are exposed and cold; they are accessible by students, teachers and visitors. They are not a destination but a means to it, a transitory space. The drains in these stairwells are thus easy to overlook. They are simply a hole and a cap, there are no pipes to collect any potential wastage and they are not connected to a system that works to relocate anything that might enter into them. Their purpose is confusing and their presence strange. However, they quietly create a connection between the separate floors; if an individual were to stand on the top floor and look down they would be able to see through each level and to the bottom. Their absence therefore determines their presence.
It was interesting to discover that many individuals had never noticed these drains, particularly when so many of the people accessing this building were doing so by the stairs. Through the installation of these simple props, a shower head and a pair of taps, the space is changed. The choice is obvious, the drain looks particularly like that of a shower cubicle. The focus is no longer on reaching a destination but on the platform straddling in the middle. The props will draw attention to the drain, a construct that has quietly been there all along. The presence of the drains might be questioned: have they been installed as part of this work? This however is not the reason that I was drawn to install these items. A long and difficult day is often remedied by a hot shower; I have cried in the shower, tears of fatigue, sadness, anger. The relief is immediate, issues feel as though they dissipate through the act of ‘washing your troubles down the drain’. In this case however, the drain connects to the shower below, the concept thus changes to ‘washing your troubles down the drain’ onto somebody else.
These drains explore a transfer; a transfer of shame, hatred, pain, frustration. They explore the quiet realities of inner conflict and the ease with which privacy can be attained to hide it; more importantly the showers explore the absolute interconnectedness between human beings, a connection that is often overlooked or disregarded, just like the drains themselves.