Patters of Power and Control: Intimate Partner Violence & The Construction of Home

Artist Statement

Jennifer Wood’s autotheoretical, sculptural-based practice examines the privatization of intimate partner violence and the conditions that allow it to remain concealed within the home. Working with common domestic materials such as vapour barrier, fibreglass insulation, wood studs, and wallpaper, she exposes the underlying mechanisms of control and behaviour that sustain this violence. Drawing on the cycle of abuse as a framework, her work considers how harm becomes patterned, anticipated, and structurally embedded in domestic space. Informed by Jean Baudrillard’s theorization of objects, her research extends this approach to materials, recognizing their role in shaping emotional and symbolic experience. Attending to the home as a symbolic and material construct, Wood approaches its walls as active participants in lived experience, tracing how they shift from markers of shelter to mechanisms of isolation and containment, and how these architectural boundaries come to be perceived and inhabited under conditions of violence.

Studs

Featured in The Show 2026 at the Libby Leshgold Gallery :

Studs uses wood-grain wallpaper folded into the form of standard 2×4 studs, an object typically associated with structural integrity and domestic permanence. Nine studs are installed leaning against the gallery wall in a continuous row, referencing both construction in progress and architectural exposure. Due to the inherent fragility of wallpaper, the forms buckled under their own weight—bending, collapsing, and crumpling rather than standing upright. The wood-grain surface performs the visual language of strength and stability, yet upon closer inspection reveals its inability to function as a true support. Studs asks how the symbolic architecture of the protective and secure home becomes unstable and deceptive when IPV is present, aiming to expose how structures that appear solid may in fact be compromised, fragile, and unsafe.

MFA Thesis Project:

Jennifer Wood, How Can I Leave When You’re Always Listening?, MFA Thesis Exhibition, 2025-2026

The home is often considered a place of comfort, a retreat from the outside world. But what happens when the very walls meant to protect us, instead fester with abuse? My immersive sculptural thesis project How Can I Leave When You’re Always Listening? (2025-2026) explores the domestic captivity of intimate partner violence (IPV), a “behaviour by an intimate partner or ex-partner that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm, including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviours. This is one of the most common forms of violence experienced by women globally” (UN_Women). The privatization of IPV allows it to remain concealed behind the walls of the home. By working with common domestic materials such as vapour barrier, fibreglass insulation, wood studs, and wallpaper, I look to expose the hidden mechanisms of control and behaviour that underpin this violence. I focus on the cycle of abuse as a framework for understanding how harm becomes patterned, anticipated, and structurally embedded in the home. My aim is to foreground embodied recognition of abuse by investigating how violence reshapes the experience and meaning of the home. The work encourages viewers to recognize the subtle, pervasive ways abuse is experienced and endured, cultivating awareness of the intimate and cultural dynamics that sustain IPV.

Works cited

“FAQs: Types of violence against women and girls.” UN Women – Headquarters, 17 Nov. 2025, https://www.unwomen.org/en/articles/faqs/faqs-types-of-violence-against-womenand-girls. Accessed 28 Jan. 2026.