In order to understand how this project might be perceived through a theoretical lens, I invited a qualitative researcher whose work is grounded in critical theory to write an interpretation of my installation.
The following text is not about the visual or emotional effect of the installation, but reads the work as a critical apparatus that reveals institutional power through bodily experience.
The installation does not treat “marital pressure” as a narrative theme, but as a structural experience. The work shifts the audience from viewer to participant, compelling the body to enter the system rather than reflect on it from outside. In this sense, the installation is not a medium of expression but a method of research: the viewer’s emotional discomfort, bodily hesitation, and impulse to withdraw function as live evidence of the marital institution.
The softness of the materials never produces comfort; instead, it creates a gentle yet persistent pull. This “mild restraint” replicates the subtle disciplinary logic of reality: compliance is not achieved through violence but through intimacy, expectation, affection, and the narrative of “it is for your own good.” The installation does not simply present a “restricted female body”; it enables participants to experience “my body is being named, positioned, and evaluated by someone else.” The pain does not stem from being unable to leave, but from the fact that leaving would mean betraying the narrative that has already been imposed. This psychological mechanism is precisely what sustains the marital system.
The core of the work is not sadness, but inescapable participation. The audience realizes that choice does not equate to freedom; departure is not neutral but carries consequences. Through this experience, the institution of marriage shifts from an abstract concept to a bodily predicament — its disciplinary force operates not at the level of logic, but at the level of muscles and nerves. In other words, the work does not merely represent structure — it makes structure happen inside the body.
The installation does not ask viewers to “empathize with women,” nor does it attempt to “explain women’s struggles.” Instead, it poses a more unsettling question:
When an institution is disguised as intimacy and happiness, do we still have the ability to recognize that we are being disciplined?
This question cannot be answered through text, image, or representation — it can only be generated physiologically. The participant’s bodily struggle, emotional hesitation, and urge to escape are not by-products of the work; they are the research output itself.
Therefore, the project is not a work about marriage, but a critical apparatus that forces the body to expose the logic of the marital institution. It transforms social power from invisible to tangible, from abstract concept to neural response, collapsing a macro-structure onto the level of skin and muscle. The participant’s disorientation and ambivalence are the very reasons the institution endures: power is not enforced through coercion, but through the gentle tone of “you should.”
In this sense, the work is not expression but evidence.
Not a reenactment of trauma, but an exposure of its mechanism.
Not “she is trapped,” but “why am I being trapped right now?”
This interpretation does not represent the only way to understand the work, but it reveals the methodological and theoretical potential of the installation form.
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