The interactive blog Housing Projects analyzes the relationship between domestic architecture, art, and politics, exploring the microeconomics of class in the art world, especially as it is inscribed in the personal politics of the home. The house serves as a signifier of personal and social perils, just as it can serve to shelter its occupants from the same. From the actions of Gordon Matta Clark to the photographs of LaToya Ruby Frazier, artworks that contend with the space of the home bridge the gap between the intimate and the universal; it is a ruin, monument, and memory. Launched at the onset of development of Mike Kelley’s and Superfront’s community-oriented artworks in Michigan homes, Housing Projects tracks these efforts over the course of their first year and analyzes other contemporary artworks that appropriate the house as an artistically, politically, and personally significant structure.
Farrah Karapetian is an artist who works in photography and sculpture, and a writer who has contributed to venues such as Art & Education, ArtSlant.com, the Brooklyn Rail, and WhiteHotMagazine.org. When she began publishing art criticism in 2004, she primarily wrote reviews of exhibitions of fine art photography, examining the work of such artists as Andreas Gursky, Marco Breuer, John Szarkowski, and Lee Friedlander. She has since moved to a more philosophical terrain and uses writing to discuss the phenomena of art making and showing.