Room 17

Pamela Brabants

30 May – 25 June 2016

Room 17 is a response to The Yellow Wallpaper, a novel by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. First published in 1892, the main character is shut up in a room, wherein the pattern of the wallpaper becomes the focus of her enforced confinement and gradually consumes her mind.

'My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go.' Oscar Wilde, in the weeks leading up to his demise confined to a gaudy hotel room.

These two references: one a piece of literature, the other a writer of renown - create visual spaces where the written word meets imagination. In Room 17 I translate my interpretation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Oscar Wilde examples into a physical artwork. I expand highly-technical, trance-like modes of pattern making and drawing within my own practice to create an immersive site-specific installation. Viewed from the window at street level looking in, this ’second-hand’ audience experience emulates a similar level of participation offered to the reader of their books. 

Room 17 belongs to a larger body of work, The Horizontal Series. While a project in its own right, Room 17 continues my exploration of well-known to unknown art history narratives of people in the state of repose.