Empty Drawer

The shiny, veneered surface of the works imitates wood-effect laminate and, along with the seemingly real handles and peeled-off stickers, Shoham has created a trompe l’oeil object, completing a work of deception. As Baudrillard writes ‘The objects of trompe l’oeil have something of the same fantastic vivacity as the child’s discovery of his own image, an unmediated hallucination anterior to the perceptual order’. Shoham intends to return the viewer to a moment in time, a flashback of a child gleefully attaching stickers to bedroom furniture; and later, returning to peel, pick, and scratch the unwanted remains with dermatillomaniacal compulsion. The passage of time turns the once-coveted stickers into sunburnt skin or a scab that one guiltily and secretly peels off.
The canvas is the same size as the drawer it represents. It becomes a ‘double’, paralleling the real object. ‘It is the appearance of the double, in the guise of trivial objects that creates the effect of seduction’. The stickers are marks of ownership and signs of individuality, showing the process of getting rid of the old and the unloved, trying to clear a space for new images.
The ‘damage’ to the furniture also seems like a juvenile rebellion against the conventional aesthetic and established values. However, the desire to assert one’s individuality and reject the old often happens by following current trends and fashions. So, perversely, it is an act of conforming at the same time. Using mass-produced stickers echoes the desire to belong and to fit in. It is a “ready-made identity”.