THE PINK ELEPHANT
The “Pink Elephant” installation is therapeutic, healing and interactive. The concept came to me one day while I was under a lot of stress, having nightmares and facing some childhood traumas . A soothing, oversized pink elephant appeared to me while I was sleeping. It was such a positive contrast to the life I was living as everything in my dream was overly quiet, pink, foggy, still and calm. I felt so much better the following weeks. I decided to personify that vision and feeling by creating a pink photography series of 5 oversized, lively, eccentric self-portraits, in 5 different pink outfits, 5 different pink locations (throughout New York City and Los Angeles) with 5 different pink filters for the final printing.
I wanted to allow people to also immerse themselves so I created a pink room with only pink clothes, furniture and accessories that they could wear and take pictures in. What if people could heal even for a few hours during the exhibit?
Last but not least I built a pink table with toys and food that either were purposely bought in pink or spray-painted.
The idea is to guide the audience into tapping into positive, hopeful and innocent memories of our childhood in order to preserve our heart while facing hard times. It is also giving the chance to create those memories for the people that didn’t have a good childhood.
The work is also an ode to the color pink and its strong association with embracing, motherly, protective and feminine energies. For research and production purposes I used fashion magazines, the Baroche theater and the kitsch movement style.
The piece was the results of roughly 350 hours of work.
If traumas trigger us, who is to say that excess of happiness can’t do the same but with a better outcome?
THE PINK ELEPHANT
