Second Home

Physical changes to the architecture of a gentrifying urban space can often feel surreal and unnerving. They create a fake form of universal happiness associated with that deadly marketing phrase quality of life. Each incremental shift pushes the self, especially the queer self, to homogenize – something you want to reject, but in time is unavoidable.

At times I want to escape this feeling, which I’ve had growing up in South London. Without meaning to, I turn to capitalist tools to help me shift my socioeconomic status, jumping into higher wealth brackets through dating or sex. It leaves me feeling invalidated at times. But, I subconsciously hope it can land me a property and validate my sexual gender identity. My drawings satire unaffordable luxury living and new urban architecture’s impact on one’s emotional state. I realize even the target of my escapism has been gentrified.

The first real creative forms of expression I remember encountering were the pop music videos I watched when I was younger. There was (and still is) a universal nature to their commentaries on social economy, consumer culture, body image, and their ability to draw out anyone’s emotional baggage. Pop was a surreal form of life medicine on which I used to (and still do) overdose heavily. My own pop music videos document a continuous queer narrative of walking down a fast-gentrifying local high street, internalizing projections from the newly installed objects and architecture.

Come to Second Home, a state-of-the-art family home for the modern living.

–Gaby Sahhar