Furniture
MARGINAL MAN
2017
Art Furniture / Partition
Marker on acrylic
71” x 67” x 24”
Category
Medium
Dimensions
Marginal Man is an art-furniture partition that turns identity into an inhabitable boundary. Built from transparent acrylic inscribed with personal writing, the piece frames in-betweenness not as a problem to solve, nor as a condition to be fixed or defined, but as a lived spatial state—layered, shifting, and permanently unfinished. It asks how a boundary can be read, felt, and occupied.
Where the Boundaries Blur
Marginal Man describes a person living between two worlds—never fully inside either one. The work translates that condition into a partition made of layered clear acrylic panels, each hand-written with fragments from a personal essay. As the panels overlap, legibility fluctuates: passages sharpen, blur, and disappear depending on where you stand, making the boundary perceptual rather than fixed.
Color acts as a quiet index of dual worlds: red and blue register separation and coexistence without hierarchy. A small anchoring seat places the body inside the field of panels—inviting standing, leaning, and sitting at the edge of multiple readings. The result is furniture that behaves like room: thin architecture where boundaries are not lines, but atmospheres made of layered memory.
↑ Marginal Man (2017), Pencil on paper
A body is never fully clear—held inside a growing mass of scribbles. As the lines accumulate and dissolve, the figure flickers between presence and erasure; the boundary becomes a shifting field, made visible through density and opacity.
“My days have been spent drawing borders—never knowing where the line should end. Even when it wasn’t always kind to me, the border kept giving me new ways to see: new senses, new space, new perspective.”
↑ Excerpt from personal essay (2017)
From Scribble to Structure
The process shifts ambiguity into construction. Dense marks first produce opacity through accumulation; those marks are then replaced by letters and essay fragments, turning atmosphere into language. Through studies of layering and alignment, the partition becomes a legible spatial mass—thickness produced by overlap, not by walls.
An Inhabitable Boundary
In mockups and installation, the acrylic panels act like moving thresholds: your position determines what can be read and what disappears. The seat anchors the body within the layered field, turning the viewer into the “marginal man” the work describes—standing, leaning, or sitting at the edge of multiple interpretations. Color remains a quiet index of dual worlds: red and blue marking separation and coexistence without hierarchy.
