During the past years of grad school, I’ve been exploring hierarchies and utopias; my role within both (unwitting participant? contributor? creator?); and what happens when upward progression is thwarted. With tongue-in-cheek, I’m designing wearable objects for women that explore the duality of our desire for growth, and our fear of it.
I’m knowingly skirting a line between art and design; between wanting to illuminate the issue and wanting to solve it. And so to help clarify, or maybe further obviate it (I'm still not sure about this), I’ve borrowed a philosophical framework to hang this exploration on: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
MASLOW
In the mid-fifties Abraham Maslow developed his theory of self-actualization, a process of healthy growth through a never-ending series of free choice situations in which we choose between the delights of safety and growth, dependence and independence, regression and progression, immaturity and maturity.
Safety---<PERSON>--Growth
Maslow identified five levels of need that must be achieved, in order, to reach self-actualization starting with physiological needs and followed by safety, the need for belonging and love, self-esteem, and finally creative self-actualization, or self-development.
Image from SimplePsychology.org
I’m fascinated with the objects we women employ to give us mastery over each level of need. I'm also interested in what happens when a lower-level need level such as shelter is suddenly missing; when a piece of the pyramid is cut out. Both will be illustrated in my SMFA thesis exhibition May 29-June 1 at Carroll and Sons.