STUFFED is part of the Objectified Beliefs sub-collection within Fragmented Harmony. This sub-series examines how culturally loaded objects—particularly those associated with intellect, belief systems, or symbolic authority—are stripped of their original function and re-inscribed with layered, often contradictory meaning.

A deconstructed MacBook serves as the core of this intervention. Its keyboard has been gutted and filled with soft toy stuffing—an absurd and deliberate gesture that collapses the technological and the sentimental. Meanwhile, its screen is replaced by a grid of mirrored tiles that spell out the word STUFFED, pixelated across the surface. From a distance, the piece appears sleek and coherent. Up close, it resists both interaction and interpretation.

In this work, language becomes obstruction. The word “stuffed” operates in multiple registers: as a term for fullness or overconsumption, as a descriptor of emotional or cognitive exhaustion, and as an old British colloquialism for being ruined or defeated. This simple, confrontational word acts as both diagnosis and deterrent—a command that stops critique before it begins.

By mirroring the viewer while simultaneously rendering the screen unreadable, STUFFED critiques a culture where devices of thought and communication have become agents of saturation and control. The machine no longer processes—it absorbs. It no longer invites thinking—it reflects noise. Its internal mechanisms are replaced by softness, its function aestheticized into passivity.

This transformation points to the infantilization of intellectual tools, the commodification of expression, and the way consumer culture has dissolved the space for critical reflection. What once enabled access to knowledge is now reduced to a decorative shell—a comforting, curated simulacrum of itself.

STUFFED resists nostalgia or mourning. Instead, it offers an image of conscious decay—a sculptural rendering of cognitive and cultural exhaustion in an age of information surplus and ideological noise.

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