Pillow Culture is dedicated to the study and dissemination of the pillow and proposes to collect, record, and archive the rich pillow stories of diverse communities, originally proposed for Queens Museum, New York, through a mobile PILLOW Cart. Like the bookmobile of the past that brought the library to the reader, the PILLOW Cart extends the reach of an institution, acting as a repository for contemporary living cultures. In its mobility, the PILLOW Cart is an interactive oral archive that both gathers and circulates a collection of cross- cultural pillow stories.   

In its most familiar form, the pillow is typically understood as an aide to sleep. Yet, as a personal artifact, the pillow may also serve as a mnemonic device for revealing individual and cultural identities and memories. Pillows vary in form and use from one community to another: ritual pillows used in Hindu wedding ceremonies; medicinal pillows common to Asian communities; therapeutic hand support pillows in the ubiquitous nail salons found throughout Queens. Pillows, as cultural markers, initiate stories.

Considering that fieldwork is both exploratory and evidentiary, Pillow Culture collaborates with local folklorists and oral historians to engage with a range of communities. The PILLOW Cart is a multi-phased project that commences with a story-gathering phase to produce audio recordings documenting oral histories of the pillow accompanied with photo portraits of community storytellers and their pillows. In subsequent phases, the PILLOW Cart can be presented as an interactive installation.  More broadly, Pillow Culture’s intention is to have the mobile cart travel to other cultural locales and institutions for an ever-expanding archive of pillow stories.