Where She Sleeps
When you blow out the candles on your twentieth birthday, there’s an expectation that you should know who you are and who you wish to be. You should be acquainted with the layers of your flesh and the beating of your pulse by now. The reality is that being in your twenties or late teens is just as confusing as to when you were 15 and infatuated with Alex Turner. You may still impulsively color your hair pink and cut it into a mullet as if trying on new shoes to see which “fits” the best. You may loudly listen to bedroom pop which will annoy your roommates more than your parents now. And you might pick up new hobbies on a bi-weekly basis. Growing older doesn’t mean that you stop changing or you’ve suddenly figured out who you are and rooms are directly reflective of that process. Rooms act as mirrors to who a person is in a specific moment in time. When you were 13, you may have had Justin Bieber’s “Never Say Never” poster on your wall but now it’s been switched out for Lil Uzi Vert. They’re reflective of your opinions, interests, likes, feelings and they can just be a place to hideaway. “Where She Sleeps” is a photo project that examines the rooms of girls in their late teens to early twenties and how their space is reflective of their identity.
Don’t be a fucking bitch
Love thy baby head like it’s your own
Hail to cat god Zepp or get the fuck out of her house
The rules for Ashley “Ash” Badran’s room are quite simple and easy to abide by.
Ash is 22 and a full-time graphic designer with an affinity for stickers, baby heads and all things crafty. She’s been collecting and putting items on her wall since she first moved out which has gained her the loving title of a “hoarder” from her friends and herself. There is even a bag of her cat Zepp’s fur endearingly hanging on her wall.
As a kid, she had a habit of collecting things and just keeping it in her room as “treasure” which has evolved with her today. Her walls are filled with different items that she’s found while thrifting that have caught her eye. If she sees something visually striking to her, she’ll take it and find a place for it on her wall. Each object holds different values and memories to her but her favorite overall item is her coca-cola plate as she thinks coke is the “best beverage on earth”.
Her bedroom also contains a trunk filled with all the crafts that she has created over time. Some of her crafts entail baby head necklaces, baby head candles, and baby head paintings. Ash makes most of her artwork revolve around baby heads as she’s attracted to the variety of types there are and how striking their appearances can be.
“I’d say my life is really eclectic and so is my room. I think my room feels like my room because of all the eclectic qualities. I love it when you go into a room and there’s no conversation going on but there’s still things to look at and ask about. That’s my favorite part about my room because people will come in and immediately ask about something that they see and every time it’s something different because everyone’s eyes adjust to a different part of the room. Like whether they look at the babies and ask about that or they look at the painting, there are just so many different things to look at and so many different conversation pieces to have.” - Ash Badran
Likes: Plants, Fashion, Earth Signs Dislikes: Full moons, Scorpios
“The moon makes me moody bro. I hate it. Every time there’s a full moon I want to die. There was a full moon in Scorpio. I hate Scorpios too. They scare me, bro.” - Amanda Lojszcyk
When asked to describe herself the first thing that Amanda Lojszcyk says is “I’m a Virgo”. She loves astrology and tarot and has a special affinity for the symbol of the sun. She’s always liked warm sunlight which is part of the reason why she chose such an open-styled bedroom where lots of light can stream through. She describes the vibe of her room as “based
in sunlight, very clean, very airy and a couple of plants because I love nature, especially as an earth sign”.
Amanda is a 19-year-old student studying the industry of fashion through a business lens. She has a love of fashion which is showcased through the mood board she created on her wall. The images vary from Vogue editorials to photos of aesthetically pleasing shirts. She thinks part of her attraction to the fashion industry is through the individuals who work in it and how passionate they are about what they’re designing and creating.
She prefers everything in her room to be organized, clean and have a cohesive color scheme. Right now she’s been attracted to softer colors such as greens and beiges. When decorating her room previously, Amanda opted for a more minimalist room but has slowly progressed into adding more items into her bedroom like mood boards and tapestries. She’s said that she felt the urge to have her room be more expressive of who she is and what she likes.
Insights into Daniella Kowaliuk’s Mind Through Her Wall:
We are a brainwashed generation
Society killed the teenager
George Harrison was the best Beatle
Daniella Kowaliuk handpicked each of the images on her wall to follow her common interests and the ideologies that she personally has. She doesn’t literally think that society killed the teenager but she isn’t shy to state that she thinks we live in a consumerist society based on materialism and vanity. She feels that she uses images like that to remind herself to stay rooted
in reality and what actually matters to her. And she also just loves The Beatles and George Harrison.
Daniella is a 19-year-old student who studies politics but wants to be studying Environmental Sustainability. She doesn’t want to call herself “opinionated” but she’s always been loud on her viewpoints whether it’s towards materialism or the environment. The environment is one of her biggest passion which also cues into her love of the state of Hawaii. She visited Hawaii in May of 2018 and was taken aback by viewing everything in real life and its natural habitat. Seeing and being around things like that have fueled Daniella’s passion for the environment and conserving it which is reflected in her wall dedicated to the impact that her trip had on her.
Creepy porcelain dolls with bulging eyes are more than welcome into Maddy Schutz's room but anything robot or AI needs to exit immediately.
Madelyn Schutz is a first-year art student who loves all things creepy and cute but hates all robots. She loves soft and pretty imagery but is also attracted to more gloomy and darker looking visuals. A perfect example of this is her collection of Madame Alexander dolls. She loves their big eyes, rosy cheeks, and fun outfits much to the dismay of her friends who find them “horrifying”.
In case you couldn’t tell from the vast amounts of posters and dolls, Madelyn is also a fan of anime and manga. She loves everything from the art that goes behind it to the actual story narratives in themselves. As an artist herself, she’s amazed by the amount of work and talent it creates to craft an entire story with visuals alongside it. One of her favorite creators is Ai
Yazawa who has an incredibly distinct style and way of capturing the emotions of her characters.
Although anime is one of her newer interests, Madelyn is an incredibly nostalgic individual who is attracted to most things that can bring back that feeling of innocence. When she was younger, one of her favorite books was a Hello Kitty book which lead to her to begin to collect various Hello Kitty items like collectible figurines and the clock that was pictured in her bedroom. She says that she loves anything from the period of the early 2000s.
“ I love nostalgia and just childhood stuff and anything that can bring me back to when I was younger because I was lucky to have a good childhood. It’s the preservation of youth and old interests and how they’ve grown up with me.” - Madelyn Schutz
”I’m not saying don’t vote but we have a very strong idea of the higher power and the people in charge.”
“You shouldn’t trust the government.” - Dylani Dabare and Sabrina Pergotski
Dylani Dabare and Sabrina Pergotski are two opinionated females sharing a room. Infusing both of their individual styles was a lot less difficult than one would imagine. They described themselves as similar but very different. They have an overlapping taste in music, art, and interests. The differences are more apparent in terms of their personalities. Sabrina describes herself as “more chill” with Dylani being more “dramatic and emotionally invested”. Despite their differences, the overarching theme that they unintentionally created in their room has been “chaos”.
Their walls are covered with posters and different images such as Renaissance paintings, David Bowie, setlists they’ve stolen from music shows to even notes that were written during manic episodes. Their walls include anything and everything that they like whether or not it goes together. They think that the amount of disorganization about their walls is what makes it look somewhat cohesive.
Their room can also be thought of as a collection of the places that they’ve been and the people that they have met. Whenever they have guests over they like to ask them to color on their desk as they work to fill in all the blank spaces. The map that’s also pictured on their wall is a collection of every street or place that they’ve visited in Toronto.
After going through everyone else’s room it only felt right to finish off on my own.
I’ve tried to make my space somewhere where it feels like home. I’ve put up more posters and
photos in this one bedroom than I have in any of the two others combined. My bedroom from my hometown had bare lilac walls and little to no furniture besides a canopy bed. My second bedroom had rich teal-colored walls but mainly only had a closet, a bed and an area for me to paint in. This room I was determined to make feel like something that belonged to me, that could be looked at and look lived in. Like a real person existed in this space, as opposed to a vague faceless and nameless individual. I don’t mind the clutter of books on healing stones or the crumpled poems on my floor or unfinished paintings that I have no idea where to put or even the tacky disjointed walls of photos I have up. I don’t mind any of the mess because although I still don’t have a solid grasp on my identity or my place in the world as I grow more into myself so does the place that I sleep.