Sophia Dell’Arciprete

MFA Photography, 2025

A home is not just a private space; but a site where societal expectations are enforced. Domestic objects, designed for comfort and function, also shape behavior, reinforcing heteronormative structures. This body of work examines how these structures are woven into the fabric of the home and how a queer presence disrupts them. Influenced by Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology, I explore how objects orient bodies toward particular futures, and what happens when those paths are resisted. 

The images portray both a physical and ideological space, exploring the tensions within its structures and the subtle ways objects disrupt or redefine those boundaries. The deconstruction of What’s Happening to Me? By Pete Mayle exposes how these expectations are introduced in childhood, embedding conventional ideas of gender and sexuality long before they are understood. A video work shows the repetitive act of moving bricks from one pile to another, a gesture that speaks to reconstructing the foundations of identity and space. 

By placing these works in conversation, I propose the home to be a space that disciplines as much as it shelters. The works ask how queerness can exist in a place designed to erase it, and whether resistance can be as simple as staying, speaking, and refusing to conform.