For the past ten years Anne Sauser-Hall has been investigating how the interweaving of reality and fiction in childhood myths, fairy tales, and stories affects the formation of collective beliefs. She does this by subtly altering utilitarian objects usually found in a domestic space (such as kitchen shelves, mattresses, floor-polishing disks) and rendering them nonfunctional.

An earlier piece consisted of low hanging shelves filled with cushions embroidered with the names of the domestic servants, all women, who had recounted many of the stories included in Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm’s famous