This is the first iteration of "Nostalgia Purgatory" by Jaden Andrea (Wynn Thorn), displayed in a sculpture gallery show called Something Worth Stealing for the Rhode Island School of Design in May 2018. This was an immersive and interactive environment in 3 sections. The first was "Your Funeral", where one interacted with an actor in the setting of a funeral parlor. The second was "Threshold of Death", where one approached a standing coffin, opens the doorway, and closes the lid on themselves. Third, they enter "Nostalgia Purgatory", through a hallway of peepholes to small dioramas of tarot-based story archetypes and sculpted root systems, as if they are going into the earth. At the end of the hallway is a room where antique objects live on and continue to function. A working Edison Home Phonograph plays music from a wax cylinder, a collection of uranium glass from the depression era glows in a victorian glass cabinet, and to the left of a vanity full of cigarette cards a fortune teller sits and beckons you toward her to receive a reading of your cards atop a WW2 era newspaper--followed by a discussion of death, and the path you've taken to reach this end.
