Family Family is an outdoor exhibition of cardboard houses with videos inside. It was displayed in a residential driveway on August 29, 2021, 4pm to 6pm. The project is part of Art For Neighbors, a curatorial project by John Schuerman with support from the Rochester Art Center. Art For Neighbors seeks to build community by connecting artists and audiences where they live.
Each cardboard house is hand-cut and is a replica of a home seen in a 1990s sitcom. Videos are playing on loop inside the houses. Each video is made up of clips from different moments of a single episode from each sitcom. The clips are stitched together allowing different moments in time to exist in the same space (resulting in some characters appearing more than once). The characters endlessly repeat limited movements, as if stuck in unbreakable habits. Each scene shows family members arguing with one another about whether or not a third person should be welcomed into the family circle.
Episodes include: The Urkel Who Came to Dinner, Family Matters: Season 3, Episode 22; Guess Who’s Coming to Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner?, Married With Children, Season 10, Episode 1; Guess Who’s Coming to Marry?, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: Season 2, Episode 6.
