Joy Christiansen Erb: Revealing secrets in the living room
Go! feature
The exhibition is set up like a family’s living room, with furniture emblazoned with photographs and text.
“The images are mostly of people and the text comes from interviews I did with people with eating disorders and people who are close to people with eating disorders,” said Joy Christiansen Erb, assistant professor of photography at Youngstown State University whose “Family Gathering: A Look into the World of Eating Disorders,” opening next week at Miami University’s Hiestand Gallery, investigate the psychological and emotional effects of eating disorders.
“Eating disorders are often talked about in the media, but at the personal level, it’s often kept quiet,” she said, so her art makes an attempt to move the conversation from the tube to the living room.
“I first thought about how secretive eating disorders are,” she said. “They live in the home. So I created a desk to represent the mind and had things tucked away in the drawers so when you pulled them open and re-arranged things on the desk you could see more images and text.”
After that, she moved on to chairs to represent a counseling session. Facing each other, one chair expressed a professional, educating voice while the other had “a needy, raw” voice, she said.
She created the room of furniture for a traveling exhibition called “Share Your Voice” in 2005.
Her goal, she said, is to “help people, especially students, talk about their eating disorders and open up that dialogue.”
how to go
- WHAT: “Family Gathering,” an installation by Joy Christiansen Erb
- WHERE: Hiestand Gallery, Miami University, Oxford
- WHEN: Oct. 21-Nov. 5
- COST: No charge
- MORE INFO: (513) 529-1883
