DESIGN INSTALLATION
A Desk of One’s Own is an evolving installation that reclaims the space for women to think, create, and write history — starting from their own perspec- tive. It is both poetic and political. Through this piece, Aurora explore how knowledge, identity, and voice are shaped in spaces traditionally denied to women. This desk is not just a functional object; it is a site of resistance, learning, and shared memory. The work draws its name from Virginia Woolf’s iconic essay “A Room of One’s Own” yet reinterprets her call: not just to write as a woman, but to take space as a woman.
Collected from her region, the desks once belonged to women — some remain intact, others are fractured. Assembled into a long, fragmented structure, their surfaces look raw at first glance. But up close, nothing is untouched. Every inch has been reworked— painted, overwritten, re-seen. She paints directly onto the wood of desks — wood on wood. The act of imitation is how she owns the space. Not to copy, but to insist. This is a form of designing — a physical, gestural, embodied manifesto. Through this process, she no longer asks for space. She takes it.
Every drawers open to reveal fragments of feminist history: a voice, a hidden room, a message, a portrait. One plays the voice of Gisèle Halimi. Another contains a miniature room inspired by The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Textures and colors echo garments worn by women who resisted. Every surface tells a story; every drawer holds a memory. This is not just an installation — it’s an open archive, a physical and symbolic gesture of feminist memory in progress.