“ ☑Other: Breaking Out of the Box” includes a series of 24 digital prints that investigate cultural identity, the pressure to conform and the challenge to celebrate diversity in contemporary consumer culture. Narrative texts that are related to the theme are inserted within scanned advertisements from the fifties and sixties and abstract landscapes and space, digitally rendered. The stories reveal many aspects of living in a diverse society where difference is either commodified or feared. Many of the pieces combine humor and irony with stories of fear, shame and the courage to transform both. The installation component of this work consists of a large story box with 28 slots for different categories of "otherness." Members of the audience are invited to share their own stories about prejudice and assimilation and share them with others who visit the space. The box is covered with tissue paper membranes (like a thin skin) that the viewer punches open in order to leave their story. Augusta Savage Gallery, New Africa House, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA (2001).