MOCA: Exhibition Design


The site for the exhibition, the canopy entry frame at the Temporary Contemporary of the Museum of Contemporary Art, necessarily dislocates the tent, portable housing for wilderness recreation, from its context. The tents, designed to be attached to the ground, are instead suspended on a web of stays or attached to the underside of the canopy ceiling, contrasting with preconceived ideas about what a tent is and memories of canvas pup tents needing the ground to hold their shapes. The viewer is encouraged to look anew at the objects.

The tent without the landscape of nature is a form without function, a fish out of water. To avoid the image of a stuffed fish hung on the wall, we have explored making its display more integrated with the very different environment which is its setting. The tents are not only the subject for scrutiny as designed objects, but also the material used to develop a surreal over- scaled wilderness of colorful beetles, insect eggs, pupae, cocoons, pods, and larvae suspended under stationary clouds. The exhibition is organized as a triptych of gestation, hibernation, and metamorphosis and framed by the column structure of the canopy acting as a forest.