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I am interested in our earliest and most universal symbolic images. To nod to the early aspect, I drew them in crayon. The iconic House is always the crayon house children draw. In the US and Britain it seems to be a red house with a peaked roof and a window on each side of the door, and we all recognize it. Many images shift across cultures, but many are surprisingly universal. I wanted images that were instantly recognizable as meaning something to nearly anyone, but which might invoke different associations and even some disagreement about their meaning. I wanted the participants and viewers to wrestle with some of the same obstacles I did when choosing the images. For example: the default for any figure is male- females are designated by skirts.
Symbols and iconic images have the potential to expand again and again into more complex meanings and are something I often explore in my work. In this case I was interested in how people would use them to express ideas, to tell their stories, and in how they would be both read and mis-read.
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