NDD Immersion Room

Part I of The Women's Trilogy Project, (The Ray Lee Project Vol. 1): NDD Immersion Room is a large-scale immersive installation whose title derives from the concept of Nature Deficit Disorder (“NDD”), used to describe a form of human alienation from nature that results in both a greater susceptibility to negative moods and a reduced attention span. First debuted in 2017 at the former Victori+Mo location in Brooklyn, the artist’s NDD Immersion Room was created in response to a broad societal obsession with technology that has diverted collective attention away from outdoor experiences.

Upon entering the exhibition, visitors will surrender their phones and receive a lantern to enter a dimly lit interior forest barely illuminated by a campfire with very few signs of civilization. Hovnanian created this exhibition under her male pseudonym, Ray Lee, assigned by her peers during adolescence to reflect her interest in stereotypically masculine outdoor pass-time like camping and fishing.