Press Release

6/6/2024

from underneath, 1942-2024

Samuel Wildman works in sculpture, video, and installation. As a handyman and a dad, his practice is rooted in the strange and sometimes mystical body of knowledge embedded in the soft labor of caretakers, baby whisperers, and fixers. He describes his practice as a comfortable, home-like space that finds definition in the moments when familiarity falters. The objects and installations that he makes are inspired by the unpredictable forms produced when social and political absurdities are normalized, made familiar, and home-like.

The relations that shape housing in the United States are complex, driven by politics, technology, economics and needs. They are illusory and chimerical and experienced differently across generations and demographics. However, there are moments in history when something is produced, that in hindsight, speaks clearly to certain dynamics underpinning forms of home in the U.S. 

from underneath  is an installation based on archival images of a militarized landscape. In Seattle during WWII, fake trees, fake homes, and fake neighborhoods were built on top of an airplane hangar by Hollywood set designers hired by the military. From thousands of feet above, the fake trees and houses blend into the surrounding neighborhood, effectively camouflaging the site of wartime manufacturing from foreign adversaries. 

The archival images highlight a moment of clear entanglement between the military and the dream-scape of housing in the US. While the word home recalls things like family, care, rest, and comfort, the history of the single family home in the US, as a physical space and an idea, has been produced through violent histories of exclusion. Looking at the archival images of this fake neighborhood, we see a clear weaponization of the notion of home. 

But in defense of what? For whom? Whose agenda and ideals are woven into the facade of the home? The archival images have a wow factor. They are interesting and ambitious. The synthetic trees provide shade to sit and consider the entanglements they suggest. 

“I wanted to create an environment that replicates the comfort of sitting in the shade of a tree while also gesturing to the challenging paradigms we face when thinking about the uses of housing in the US.”  —Samuel Wildman, Artist