Today in "who's THEIR agency?" – IKEA
Ikea’s homepage currently features an image of a system of storage boxes for towels, with the (presumably laundered, clean) towels accessed by disembodied hands reaching through multiple holes in the wall (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1: IKEA Home Page
This is a real “curiouser and curiouser” type of image with many layers of depth, all confusing. Let’s use a framework inspired by Epure, Eisenstat, and Dinu’s (2014) semiotic framework – the first impression, the surface, and the underlying – to break down our relationship with the source text and peel away at the skin of the onion…
One: The First Impression
Fig. 2: Hands through Holes
My initial, gut-level reaction to this image is that it looks like a scientist handling radioactive material through a protective panel (Fig. 2) - or maybe a surgeon operating on E.T. This is a weird headspace to be in, and it definitely doesn’t put me in the mood to buy towels, towel holders, or join IKEA’s family program.
Two: The Surface
Why *are* the towels kept behind the wall? One assumes the towel grabber can’t actually see the towels that they are grabbing. Does it matter that they can’t see how many clean towels are remaining? Is this information being kept from them for a reason? Do the grabbers find it irritating that the towels do not actually fit through the holes as folded and need to be smooshed to be brought out? Does the grabber get annoyed that the side of their grabbing fist has to brush up against the sides of the too-small hole?
Fig. 3: The Towel Cradler
Shift your attention to the person to the right of the frame, cradling the folded dark blue towel (Fig. 3) – their hand posture doesn’t suggest an intent to extract the towel through the hole. Are they holding the towel up for someone else to avail themselves of? Is it being held up for our benefit, behind the fourth wall?
Is the viewer being invited to participate in this absurd scene?
Fig. 4: Towel Colours
The towels are of different shades of blue (Fig. 4). Does it matter that they are of different colours? Does that difference matter to us? To the towel grabber? To some other towel-using party? Would the towel grabber react differently to the fact that they had grabbed a towel of one colour over another? If, on pulling the towel through to the other side, the towel colour is deemed unacceptable, would that person put the initial towel back? How would they get the towel back into the Skubb storage system? Given that the towel wouldn’t fit through the hole neatly folded, would they have to walk through a door to get access to the storage area, or do they have to smoosh the towel through the hole and leave it for someone else to fold?
And finally, the crucial question: who folds the once-smooshed towels?
Three: The Underlying
Viewed at a symbolic level, could this image perhaps be a social critique on gender politics?
Fig. 5: The Absurd Scene
The image is weird precisely because of what's it doesn’t show. Behind those walls (Fig. 5), is there an ungrateful family that thinks towels get laundered and put away in a chest of drawers without a second thought for who does the laundry and folds them neatly? Is it a social commentary on the visibility of, and value placed against, unpaid (traditionally women's) domestic labour? Is this feminist art? And is the space itself, shown in the image, a liminal "nether zone" inhabited by domestic labourers, segregated and marginalised from the rest of the family in a "upstairs/downstairs" sense? Should the wallpaper be yellow, not blue?
Finally… Who IS their agency??! Sound off in the comments if you know anything about the creation of this facinating text, that is positively Tarkovsky-esque in the richness of its symbolism.