Seven Moon Hill

2025 │72" x 72" x 72"

When I presented this modular construction system at my senior thesis exhibit, the parts were configured to form a shelving unit, but next month it might be a jungle gym or a picnic table. On this structure, I created a fake store, 7 Moon Hill & Co. to illustrate critiques I laid out in my BA thesis in Material Culture Studies: Status Versus Virtue in Wood: How a Material Signals Sustainability, Quality, and Authenticity Today. I sourced the objects for the store by contacting brands and wood manufacturers about this opportunity, and coordinated the return of the objects they lent me. In my research, I examined how cultural and economic elites employ scripted narratives that frame their relationship with objects as fundamentally better and morally superior. Yet these justifications obscure how they are more invested in cultivating cultural capital than in creating the ethical future they claim to champion. Wood is hailed as a cure-all for the global issues of our time. However, in embracing this material, we further entrench ourselves in commodity logic, exacerbating crisis.