“An extension of Ingarden’s longer term research project Rescue Dummies (2021-22), Inside The Dream House (2022) explores the lives and stories of the Butterfly People, five or six fictional characters central to the narrative spine of the project. To conceive Inside The Dream House Ingarden conducted long interviews with each of the characters. Those interviews then became the main object around which the project unfolds into multimedia sculptures and sound installations. Within the installation, resembling a creamy cloud, is growing a live Lion’s Mane mushroom culture, connected through sensors to the computer. The program translates the information from recorded interviews and switches accordingly, from one speaker to another. The result gives an impression of an intimate conversation between interviewees that resonates in the exhibition space. The presence of the characters is magnified by five free standing window structures, containing sculptures made out of handmade

clothes.”

– Yomna Osman

The costumes, reconstructed silk printed suits with their linings coming from the inside over the outisde, suggest characters coming from an eerie setting. The costumes are a next stage of the transformation of Butterfly People characters presented in the Rescue Dummies (2021). The Dream House World is a corporate world. The system keeps Butterfly People in a dreamlike state, at the same time producing a simulation in which they constantly work for the system. The objects and clothing from these series live their own life and transform after being used, ready to host a new narrative. Printed moths and inside layerings come out from the backs of jackets and trousers, suggesting wings and insect bodies. The “subconscious” insides take the control over the rigid exterior forms of the suits. Lingering behind the glass, these phantom forms seem to approach the surface of reality on the other side. The tinted windows occult the view, becoming a threshold to a parallel dimension. Following the narrative of Rescue Dummies, The Dream House is a step closer towards the center, the brain of this fictional world, focusing closely on the transformation of the characters within it.