Sabina Chun
Where Paper Stars Hang
Prompt: For this final project/assignment, we were prompted to construct a maquette/miniature room based off on a book/play or a memory with no glue or tape allowed for the structure.
The set is inspired by the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. This book tells the story of a psychiatric hospital in the 1950s that explores themes of power, control and the struggle for individuality. The novel shows how the warm functions as an encapsulated system of oppressive social systems. However, the more I built the maquette, the more I started to relate to the set on a personal level, as I started to incorporate my own experience of being in a psychiatric ward when I was eleven years old. I started to bring personal memories and objects into the set, making it a combination of both a memory and a text.
The structure is a black cardboard/foam material held with paper clay, which caused some warping. Air-dry clay tiles, wire and cardboard makes the room. Furniture, tools and the cuckoo bird are clay or cardboard. Acrylic paint adds color and “blood.” Paper stars reflect personal memory. Exterior uses net wire and clay.
“When I was eleven, I was sent to the ward,
a place where shelves held more than just medication.
They held routines like holding chains.
Time stretched thin and I had too much of it
So I folded my hours and days into paper stars.
A book about the ward came to life with the battle of power and spirit.
I heard screams down the halls, proof that the mind could be caged,
That rebellion always comes at a cost.
The room watched people bend under authority,
Learn the price of conformity.
The walls breathed
Shadows pooled everywhere like blood
Every moment was a warning
I carried folded stars like prescriptions and still carry a cuckoo’s call in my mind
I was twelve when I left.”