Rachel Lebo and the Sociology of Architecture

RACHEL LEBO AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF ARCHITECTURE

By Lacy Murphy

Since the beginning of her experience as an MFA student in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University (WashU), Rachel Lebo’s artistic practice has increasingly investigated the extent to which architectural space defines identity and shapes individual experience. In other words, Lebo’s practice is centered on the sociology of architecture: the study of the built environment and how designed spaces act as a visual expression of social structures.

Lebo’s interest in this broad-ranging albeit qualitative heuristic allows her to investigate the relationship of architecture to multiple identity markers, including race, gender, sexual orientation, class and disability. Which spaces are accessible — and to whom? How do these spaces actively determine the trajectory of a person’s life? These are questions Lebo seeks to explore in her work.

Delmar Divide, a racial and socioeconomic dividing line between North and South St. Louis. This division was made stark after the city passed a residential segregation ordinance in 1916 that effectively sequestered African-American St. Louisans to neighborhoods north of Delmar Boulevard. It was the first referendum in the nation that ensured racial segregation through housing.

As a result of this ordinance, the racial makeup of neighborhoods directly north of the divide continues to be 99% African American. In addition, the median annual income of those living in that area falls below the federal poverty line. Only 5% of city residents who live north of the divide obtain a bachelor’s degree, as opposed to the 70% who live directly south of the divide. Life expectancy, infant mortality

A city like St. Louis, a place where the built environment determines much about a person’s life, is certainly an appropriate site for Lebo’s artistic inquiry. St. Louisans might be especially aware of the built environment’s intersection with race due to the enduring presence of what is often referred to as the rates and access to healthcare are also affected by the Delmar Divide. As illustrated by these statistics, architectural space in St. Louis has a dramatic impact on income, education and health.

Before coming to WashU, Lebo had already begun an artistic practice that critiqued the cultural consequences of the built environment. Several of her early works reveal how power can literally be architected by deconstructing the physical and ideological underpinnings of designed spaces. In Lebo’s Living Room, several nude women serve as various pieces of furniture: a television stand, a chair, a sofa, a lamp and coffee table. The soft, curvilinear forms of the nude female form clash against the hard, rectilinear architectural space of the room.

Rachel Lebo, Living Room (photo credit: Lacy Murphy)

Through this composition, Lebo interrogates how physically constructed spaces and societal constructions of gender reaffirm each other, visualizing how women become marginalized when they are sequestered to the private sphere. In Lebo’s painting, women are not just permanent fixtures of domestic space as the homemaking and child-rearing counterpart to men; they literally become domestic fixtures — immobilized and peripheral.

Currently a second-year graduate student, Lebo has pushed her work beyond a critique of the consequences of architectural space to more actively undermining oppressive power regimes expressed by the built environment. This has involved a practice that includes working away from the canvas, as seen in her installations Dripping Fat onto the Lawn and Saturate. Through these three-dimensional works, Lebo more directly engages the bodily experience of the built environment.

Rachel Lebo, Saturate (photo credit: Lacy Murphy)

At over seven feet tall, the sheer size of Dripping Fat onto the Lawn makes it an imposing structure. Saturate, an installation constructed of pigmented glue, canvas, acrylic house paint and 2 x 4 lumber, occupies and transforms an entire room. Both Dripping Fat onto the Lawn and Saturate resolutely constitute an architectural space of their own rather than the illusion of one, providing a more physical experience for the viewer than Lebo’s earlier painted works.

Lebo’s sociological inquiry into architecture reveals, critiques and resists the ramifications of the way we design the world around us. Her artistic progression during her time at WashU suggests that artistic education takes place not only in the classroom and studio but integrally through social interactions within a specific geographic location as well.

Whether Lebo’s time as an MFA student in St. Louis — a city where architectural space determines much about identity and experience — has indirectly or directly influenced her practice, it is crucial to remain mindful of the broader contemporary racial and socioeconomic climate. Young artists like Lebo are cutting their teeth during a time where neo-segregationist policies involving architectural constructions (e.g. Trump’s Wall) are becoming increasingly normalized in the discourse. These artists serve as cultural commentators by investigating the impact of these practices as they encourage us all to consider the sociology of architecture.

www.samfoxschoo.wustl.edu www.rachellebo.com

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