A domestic interior is partially dismantled: sections of a polished wooden floor are lifted and staggered, exposing a grid of shallow compartments beneath. Within these cavities lie carefully arranged family archives—black-and-white photographs, handwritten letters, bound diaries, legal papers, and official records—visible yet recessed, as if both unearthed and withheld. At the far edge of the room, a single upholstered chair sits on a lace doily beside a small table set with a teacup, evoking a scene of quiet inheritance and ritual.

The work stages an excavation of lineage within the architecture of the home. Beneath the floorboards are my family documents—diaries, photographs, and official records—revealing male ancestors as militiamen and “Indian fighters,” politicians, and large plantation owners. Several wills document the transfer of enslaved people as property. By physically opening the floor, the installation collapses temporal distance, bringing buried histories into the present while implicating the viewer in an act of looking down into what has been structurally concealed. The piece positions the domestic space as both archive and witness, where comfort rests uneasily atop legacies of violence, ownership, and erasure.