Kadin Mesriani
House Series: “Tan Coterie” & “White Mutt,” 2020
Digital inkjet print, and masking tape
16 x 24 Inches
My work focuses on digital collages, where I combine many different photos or pieces of photos into one picture. Due to the almost surrealist nature of these collages, the viewer is often drawn into the photo wanting to fully understand what’s going on.
My current CAS project aims to elevate this feeling of wanting to understand, so I attempted to create a contrasting comfortable, uncomfortable sensation. By this, I mean my current works, “Tan Coterie” and “White Mutt,” are inviting at first glance but once you take the time to look into them, they evoke an uncanny feeling. “Tan Coterie” and “White Mutt” are digital collages composed of architectural pieces stitched and blended together to create a house that almost looks real but isn’t. Hence having the words “coterie” and “mutt” in their titles, both having to do with bringing or mixing different things together. “Tan Coterie” warrants its name for having a consistent tan color scheme while bringing shared architectural styles together (a Spanish and Mediterranean look). “White Mutt” warrants its name for having a consistent white color scheme but with different architectural styles. Neither of the pieces are real houses, they’re simply constructed by imagination, but because they almost look like houses you’d possibly find in the real world, many are unable to isolate what’s wrong at first.
My main inspiration for creating “Tan Coterie” and “White Mutt” stems from also wanting to recreate the feeling that pop-up books spurred in my childhood. I’ve found that incorporating a three-dimensional element (doors, shutters, and garage doors popping out) to both pieces heighten the imaginative look, while also adding to the whole unnerving, puzzling feeling that I’m hoping to evoke. Cutting out pieces of the printed work, then attaching them back on to another print, and finally reshooting the entire photo serves as one of the most important steps in my entire project because it adds to the overall creativity and visual appeal that all CAS Art projects are striving for in this showcase.
I’ve ended up with two uncomfortable doll house-looking pieces, incorporating two and three-dimensional details. Although I have created a work similar to “Tan Coterie” and “White Mutt” in idea, I’ve made nothing that shares the same scale and detail that my current project exhibits. I hope to emit the same moment of wonder and awe, with an added perplexity, that I experienced when I read my first pop-up book.
