Last Chance for Romance: Barely Used

New Google search > “free sofa bed” > about 1,230,000,000 results > sponsored ad:Kijiji.ca “Find a free bed on Kijiji!”

New Google search > IKEA catalogue > about 1,300,000 results > sponsored ad:IKEA.com “The NEW IKEA catalogue is here!”

The place we sleep is the place we centre ourselves, feel stable, protected, and safe as if back in the womb. But when I travel, more often than not, I find myself sleeping on someone’s sofa bed trying to recreate the security of the “womb” feeling in someone else’s home. So where would you prefer to spend the night? What would you want your guests to sleep on? Theres a nice, new, IKEA ‘Frëbedin’ for sale NOW, and it’s only $699. But three months, a ‘Strind,’ ‘Dudëro,’ and, ‘Rådviken’ later, cluttering up your studio apartment, and all of a sudden there’s a new ad on Kijiji with your “Frëbedin”listed as a “free bed,” ‘Last Chance for Romance; Sofa Bed, Barely Used.’

We created this piece out of a realization about the absurdity of our society’s buy-what-you-want-now-and-deal-with-it-later mentality that we are all unfortunately implicit in. Through this piece, we hope that new light can be shed on the environmental impact of the relationships we have with our stuff. We hope that through this, we can start to think about valuing what we do have and thinking twice before impulse-buying what we want next.

For more from Eviah S. Obadia-Wong: http://www.ShimshonObadia.com