Came Home

2020
Installation
Canvas, Acrylic, Furniture
7’ x 8’ x 7’
668 Indian Street, Savannah, GA 31401

Came Home is a site-specific installation by Rachel Simmons. It features four fabric walls, two that are canvas and two that are translucent fabric; it also has a cotton fabric ceiling and canvas floor. The space is lit with red fluorescence from outside the fabric room. The canvas is painted a dull tan to resemble the color of a rented apartment or house. Multiple sets of footprints, made with a slightly darker shade of paint than the canvas floor, lead to the bed, but not from it. The sheets on the bed are pulled back and the middle of the bed is stained with dark blue and black paint, giving the impression that someone had been lying in it. In the red light, the paint on the bed looks black against the sheets. Additionally, there are outlines of frames and photographs on the canvas walls, painted in the same hue as the footprints. The pictures on the wall are simply blocked in though, appearing as flat gray rectangles above the bed. The only furniture in the room is the bed and a floor lamp with one lit lightbulb; the light is white.

Came Home is an extension of the installation We Grew a Garden. It recounts the artist’s time living in a Savannah house in early 2018. After living comfortably in her home for a few months, Simmons discovered that one of her roommates was abusive, both physically and emotionally, to his girlfriend, who Simmons also lived with. The environment quickly transformed into one that felt unfamiliar and unsafe. The abusive roommate would frequently switch the house’s lightbulbs out with red ones. Came Home is titled after a message Simmons sent to her friends: “Came home and the whole house is legitimately red.”