House and Universe was a major project by artist Mary Mattingly in which she bundled her personal possessions into enormous sculptural forms, then photographed and moved them through ports, sidewalks, and industrial landscapes.
I’ve spent years living in and with ecosystems and shelters I’ve co-built, some of which appear in House and Universe. Those experiences asked me to reconsider my surroundings and to imagine how collections of personal belongings could become monuments to consumption. As a resident of New York City, I contribute to a collective monument: the landfill. In absurd performances, I pulled bundled sculptures of my own possessions through the city to emphasize the literal and symbolic weight of these objects. Their wrappings are inextricably intertwined, like the cycles of production themselves. Through chains of formal and informal exchange, an object is mined, made, distributed, purchased, exchanged, discarded, and then becomes something else.
The photographs remain as relics of her inquiry, reminders that possessions are never just personal. They are fragments of global entanglement, carried, weighted, and eventually left behind.
See also: Swale
