Chattel

Plywood, metal bar, canvas, screen printing ink, red tape

Installation: 2.42m x 16.6m x 6m

2018

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While Kingston’s Rockwood Asylum was being built over a period of 11 years, 20 female
patients lived in a horse stable on the property, a former estate. Chattel
recreates the dimensions of each stable stall in order to evoke invisibility, loss and the
contingency of institutional confinement.

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Until the end of the 19th Century, asylum patients were required to wear canvas uniforms which said "lunatic" on the back. Three imagined uniform recreations make up part of this installation, recalling the loss of personal agency faced by patients.

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