Presenting six artists with booths of dimensions 6.5’(L) x 3.5’(W) x 7’(H), and a door at one end of each, my task becomes one of thinking outside the box.

Is there a way both escape and entry can happen entirely on one’s own terms? Are arrival and departure, through time, though space, through consciousness, interchangeable depending on one’s perspective? How does occupation deny movement? How is occupation in opposition to agency?

I construct a tailored and fixed staircase inside this closet, joining an anonymous and portable ladder on the outside. The ladder remembers the attic; the staircase remembers the basement, erasing the physical mark of the home between. When the viewer steps on or climbs this work, at the moment between ascent and descent, their body occupies the air space, and stands one flight up from those on the ground. Their position allows them surveillance into otherwise off-limit perspectives offering them views of the other booths, including the gallery’s own storage closet; the overlooked 7th booth.

The staircase and ladder are both points of entry and exit, arrival and departure, before and after, escape and return, allowing an active viewer to bypass the booth door as their designated point of entry. The staircase railing, taken from an old home, offers new hands access to the manual histories that came before them, supporting past with present, descendants with ascendants.

Alongside the stair is a sliver of space large enough for the choice to squeeze through, and followed by a dark, isolated space underneath the steps. There is an invitation to become the architecture, between the walls, the seams, the shape and structure of removal, dormancy, gestation, and protection.

return positions the viewer as threshold, release, rupture, removal, and revelation, through an unfolding, interstitial architecture. Two threads of independence- license and choice- allow viewers to move on their own terms, and to design their own way out.

In this way, others can help me to find if ascent and descent don’t actually lead to the same destination.