Digital images on magnetic sheets on used refrigerator
61” x 28” x 29”
2011

Refrigerator magnets are one of the most common forms of travel souvenirs that serve as a reminder of places once visited, both during and between daily domestic activities.  The advent of online shopping has made possible the purchase of destination magnets of anywhere in the world by anyone, anywhere in the world.  It is now to have travel magnets of a place you’ve never been.  

Travel Magnets is a user-participatory art project in which people from all over the world were asked to submit photographs of residential windows, to be reproduced as refrigerator magnets. Participants who kindly offered their financial support through Kickstarter will be awarded 1 or more random magnets from someone else’s window when the exhibition is over.

By juxtaposing refrigerators between the large windows of Smack Mellon Gallery located at Brooklyn, NY, Travel Magnets attempts to bring glimpses of domesticity to an artistic venue and area of the city which was formerly known for heavy manufacturing and commerce.  Like a place of import/export and exchange, the magnets will be assembled from images from all around the world, will be seen as a whole in the exhibition space, and then be dispatched randomly to the participants.  The magnets will serve as a souvenir of a place or home that the participant may never visit, but they will instantly recognize the imagery as something that has the power to be both unknown and universal at the same time: home.