Last Month’s Rent
installed June 30-July 30
Get in touch for a studio showing.
This canvas was impermanently installed during the last month my partner and I were renting a studio apartment in Mānoa, Hawaiʻi. Our studio was over 200 square feet and cost $1,100 per month (utilities included!).
As a doormat, the canvas slowly accumulated dust and grime from the outside elements and from the bottom of shoes after a hard day’s labor, acting as a muted recorder of time and energy.
Anyone who visited our studio contributed to the piece, including friends, our landlord, and all the perspective renters who came for a showing in hopes of possibly filling the apartment after our move. Visitors undoubtedly saw our living area and my art “studio,” which doubled as our kitchen table. Thus, every showing was an exhibition of the rental space and an unknowing studio visit.
The current lack of affordable housing in Hawaiʻi makes having a designated space for art making incredibly difficult, let alone having a house at all. A study released around the time of this installation found that a family of four making under $93,300 a year in Honolulu would be considered “low-income.”