This text embraces its form as a means for recognizing and representing the work of The Confessional mobile art gallery. Comprised of seven interlocking pieces, The Confessional was designed to be moved in and out of spaces with ease provided it was built out of light materials and for a tool-less assembly. The space was built in the summer of 2018 by a team of artists and designers including Ahu Yolac, Angela Inez Baldus, Henry Wilson, and Krannert Art Museum’s exhibit and installation expert Walter Wilson. Following its construction, The Confessional has played host to artists Erin Hayden, Lila Ann Dodge, Adrian Wong, Catalina Hernández Cabal, Paulina Camacho Valencia , Alicia De Léon, and Sarah Travis. These artists have worked to collaborate with the space as it has been positioned in various locations including the Sipyard, an experimental outdoor bar located in downtown Urbana, Illinois, Monaco, an artist run gallery spaced located in St. Louis Missouri, and the Link Gallery, a commons located between the School of Art + Design at the University of Illinois and the Krannert Art Museum.
As an artist and pedagogue, I am interested in the pedagogical function of art which is shaped by the spaces and objects which inform our understanding of what we know. I trace my understanding of The Confessional and my personal relationship with the gallery to better explain the varying ways that it can be known and understood. I believe that The Confessional is one of many things that’s meaning shifts through the contexts in which we view it. I make visible this shift in meaning by describing The Confessional’s materiality, mapping its transformation from an idea to an object, anthropomorphizing and interviewing it, and sharing experiences and relationships which were informed by the making of the space and the taking of space from one place to another each time it is made again. Keywords: questions, art, knowing, people, objects