Brown eyes take you to the best places/Blue eyes take you to the best places (2011)
Context-responsive installation with text and light, NK Shopping Mall, Gothenburg, Sweden. Produced in 2011.
By creating stereotypes that function as anti-stereotypes, I sought to open a dialogue about social mobility and exclusion among customers moving through the shopping mall’s elevators and changing rooms, where the statements were installed.
Developed specifically for a department store, the installation responded to a semi-public space shaped by movement, consumption, display and social distinction. Short text statements were distributed across elevators, mirrors, changing rooms and other points of passage. The statements assigned imagined qualities and occupations to eye colour. References to brown eyes appeared in blue vinyl, while references to blue eyes appeared in brown vinyl; coloured filter film was applied to the changing-room lighting.
Each statement was installed in a particular location within the department store. They could be encountered while moving between floors, waiting for an elevator, entering a changing room, or seeing oneself in a mirror. The work used colour, reflection and repetition to bring racialised associations between appearance, labour, status and social mobility into view.
