Place

As I turned into the next room, following the work of Los Carpinteros in the Psycho Buildings Exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, I could not hold back the surprise: the beauty of a tiny village, all lit-up in a dark room was like looking at a Christmas tree when you are five years old. I got so overwhelmed I actually cried. It was this nostalgic feeling of playing with doll-houses that got to me most, especially when I pictured fifty-something year-old Rachel Whiteread constructing these tiny houses with bits and pieces of materials she has been collecting all of her life.

As one looks closer into the houses, the slow unveiling of an eerie fact becomes evident. There is nobody inhabiting this village, there is no furniture inside the houses too. All the rooms of the village are empty and all contents have been taken – the only reminder of coziness of these homes are depicted by the decorative elements of each house, all individual and unique: the wallpaper, the texture of the floors and the patterns of the carpet and curtains. All these the materials Whiteread has collected in her life as they carry this memory of place, like the first memories we have being those of the pattern of the bedsheets of our first bed or the color of the wallpaper in our rooms.

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