A giant yellow head on the floor with a scalp wide enough to sit on. A rabbit’s foot hung from the wall, the size of a small child. A glowing ceramic flower, the curves so smooth and glossy it almost looked soft. What did any of these things have to do with home? Nothing, but also everything. That was the theme at the core of the delightfully bizarre exhibit Home Bodies, created by Emma Gambrill, Isabella Quick, and Dr. Kevin Kao.

The Wednesday before the exhibit’s closing reception on Sept. 8, I spoke with Gambrill and Quick about how this project came to fruition. Gambrill said it began when Kao approached her with the opportunity for an exhibition in 2023 since they had already known each other from classes. The same was true for Quick, and the three of them discussed how to form a creative world together. 

They started without a topic at first, instead sharing some ceramics and sculptures they were making at the time. One object by Quick, a candle holder, turned the conversation to ideas of domestic space. 

Before they knew it, a vision came to them, or as Kao said, “[A chance] to transform the gallery space into a liminal home: somewhere in between and wholly ours.”

“Immersive, quirky, and weird,” Gambrill said when asked about the atmosphere they strived to create in the gallery. 

To achieve this aim, the exhibit featured a host of furniture and objects that were similar to those in a typical home, but with a twist. In a sculpted sink area, there was a bar of soap, a tooth, and a pill bottle – all of which opened up. I asked Quick about what was inside them, and she told me that was not what mattered. 

“They were more to represent what an interior space looks like to different people. Many people attach a lot of meaning to their little memento boxes and what they hold inside, to the point where the boxes themselves hold a lot of value to them,” she said. 

When asked about working with the experienced Dr. Kao, Quick said, “He was great because he had a lot of knowledge in the field, not only with art but with putting up a gallery space and presenting it.” 

Gambrill similarly attested that Kao was fantastic to work with. “We did well forming ideas together, and [I] took inspiration from his work and how technically sound it is,” she said.

Quick said one of her favorite pieces was a ceramic cake she made that sits on a rotating platform. It was a lot of fun for her, so much so that she now aims to create a series of ceramic cakes. 

I searched eagerly for the cake when I arrived at the reception, and to my delight found that Quick had left out one detail about the cake in her description: 7/8ths of the cake was pristine and elegant, but on one side the cake cracked open, revealing dirt and worms inside. This sculpture enamored many, and added a dark undertone to this home away from home.

Gambrill said her favorite piece was a vase called “Pearl.” 

“I wanted to create a collection of vases, and ‘Pearl’ was the first I made that I loved, and helped inspire the rest,” she said.

The “Pearl” vase was one she spent a considerable amount of time on. The vase is covered in a few hundred rolled spheres with a white, shiny glaze, and it has two small, white lids over its two openings. The technical achievement of “Pearl” was highly impressive and made an elegant addition to the gallery.

There was another piece, though, that I felt perfectly captured the message of the exhibit: a vase by Gambrill titled “Void,” which was riddled with holes from top to bottom. This struck me as highly surreal. In any other setting, I am sure that most would question why such a vase would be made at all, as it is essentially useless at the one thing that all vases should be able to do: holding something. But that was not a question asked in the liminal space created by Home Bodies.

Amidst the weird, contradictory, and beautiful elements of the pieces, a message came into full view. No one could care less about your flaws at home—the one place where everything is allowed to simply be. There does not need to be logic. There does not need to be understanding. Home just needs you, and all the quirks that come with you. That is the energy that laid at the core of Home Bodies, one that made it such a unique and captivating exhibition.