Fabiola Mirabal Rodriguez
Fabiola Mirabal Rodriguez
Thims
Gender and sexuality intersect in ways that impact our relationship with the built environment. Rules exist that impose strict restrictions on how to carry ourselves and interact with others. These rules can be seen in how we interact with objects. The object that holds the most gendered connotations is the chair. Since its popularization several centuries ago, the chair has been a signifier for societal status and of power. Rules and etiquette were created to distinguish between class, race, and gender and to uphold a strict social order. The act of sitting is a performance that has been historically cast differently for men and for women. Men are expected to sit with a posture that denotes power while women are expected to sit in a position that communicates purity and chastity. However, not everybody played their assigned role. Due to their otherness within accepted society, queer people have always subverted the rules of etiquette. I was inspired to take the archetype of the chair and recast it to conform to my ideas around gender and sexuality. By injecting fluidity and fun into an object that has been used to restrict and constrain, I designed a nonconformist chair.
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