The flats addressed similar issues of scale to Beach Piece from the opposite direction, incorporating the viewer's vantage point from above to obfuscate the objects’ situation in space.
Like the earlier flats, the Tableaux used the reduced scale of maquettes to stage film still-esque scenes of domestic interiors and dilemmas, often incorporating disarray or ambiguous circumstances within their three walls.
Created using miniature figures and other ephemera from the everyday world, these were meant to recall both the rote "stock" characters of soap opera, and domestic dramas constructed from real life accounts and from magazines.
Using highly staged iconography appropriated from various cultural intersections of art and commerce, the display's location was meant to address the work's position to commercial interests, both metaphorically and in terms of its physical siting.
Beginning in the late 1980s, Brooks began to translate her interest in appropriated and generic imagery to a literal process, incorporating ever-increasing levels of distance from the source material.
She was a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts grant twice, in 1979 and 1991, and served on the final NEA panel for photography, shortly before the collapse of the Association's funding and subsequent dismantling of many of its programs.