Emma Vos

Design - Graphic & Interaction Design

but they're your parents

but they’re your parents is an interactive installation exploring emotional neglect, emotional harm, and the experiences that often remain unseen or misunderstood within parent child relationships.
The installation takes the form of a child’s bedroom filled with interactive objects connected to comfort, play, communication, and safety. Within the space, visitors encounter altered toys, lights, sounds, games, and interactive systems that respond in ways that feel distorted, absent, frustrating, or different from what is expected or hoped for. While the room may appear playful or comforting at first glance, the interactions slowly reveal a different emotional experience underneath.
Rather than directly explaining emotional neglect through a fixed narrative, the installation focuses on experience over explanation. Through interaction, contradiction, discomfort, confusion, repetition, and failed expectations, visitors are invited to navigate the space and interpret their own emotional responses. The work is not intended to recreate a specific memory or tell visitors exactly what to feel, but instead to create an atmosphere in which certain emotional dynamics can be experienced and recognized.
Many forms of emotional harm are difficult to explain because they are often shaped by absence rather than visible events. Emotional neglect can exist within environments that appear normal, loving, or safe from the outside, making these experiences difficult for others to recognize or understand. Responses such as “but they’re your parents” can quickly dismiss or minimize someone’s experiences before the full story is known.
The installation reflects on how people are often expected to justify emotional pain in order to be believed or understood. It questions the assumptions people make about family, safety, and care, while encouraging visitors to look beyond surface appearances and approach these experiences with more openness, empathy, and understanding.
At the same time, the work aims to create a sense of recognition for people who identify with these feelings and experiences themselves. By giving space to emotions and experiences that are often ignored, minimized, or left unspoken, the installation attempts to remind visitors that these experiences are real, valid, and more common than many people realize.

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