“The Expectations We Carry: Friction as Both Punishment and Drive” is an interactive installation that explores invisible social expectations and their impact on identity. In the form of a life-sized Jenga tower, the work examines friction as the tension between social norms and personal choices.

Each layer of the tower represents one aspect of life – career, family, identity, appearance, relationships, creativity, success or belonging. Its visible surfaces contain familiar social expectations alongside blank spaces that visitors are invited to fill with their own experiences, including statements such as “Choose something practical” or “Be yourself, but don’t stand out.” In this way, the installation gradually develops into a collective archive of lived experiences. Visitors can also introduce new themes by adding blank blocks to the top of the tower.

Like physical friction, social expectations create resistance while also driving change. They generate the tension through which resilience, self-definition and one’s relationship to society are formed. Three subtly protruding, removable blocks invite visitors to question these expectations and can be moved without destabilising the tower. When pulled out, they reveal words such as freedom, choice, voice and authenticity, suggesting that challenging expectations can open up new possibilities without necessarily bringing the whole structure down.

By transforming invisible social pressures into a visible and evolving structure, the installation becomes a collective monument to expectation and friction, encouraging visitors to recognise, share and question the experiences that shape everyday life.