Mena S.

There are two sheets of paper glued atop one another with the top one having cut out a bedroom reminiscent of Vincent Van Gogh’s, Bedroom in Arles. The floor takes up the bottom third of the page and the rest is the wall. There are cut outs of a side table, chair, hanged picture, window, and bed. Within the bed cut out there is a femme presenting person in a state of calm with pink and red lights washing over them, their arms out following a turning motion. The window cut out has a collage of different shades of blue, with the darkest shades at the bottom and lightest at the top, there are birds drawn on in the distance. The hanged picture cut out has a collage of different pictures of flowers from a magazine. Both the side table and chair cut out is colored in with colored pencil in an orange. The floor is plain white with some slits going vertically to show perspective, they are colored in orange as well. The wall of the bedroom is lightly grazed green with colored pencil and atop it there are the words “IT DOES GET BETTER” in both green marker and colored pencil in varying sizes. Scattered about there are also cut out words from magazines: “home”, “clean”, “CATALYST”, and “brighter”.

In this piece I am exploring the ritual of cleaning my room. I have been very depressed before and most of the time the thought of cleaning my room was daunting. Now that I am doing better, it is a ritual for me to clean my room once a week to show myself that it’s okay. That I am better, that I am safe, that it is worth cleaning because I will continue to live in this room.