In Make Room and Second Sleep, In Kyoung Chun and Maria Britton represent the domestic as a place of wonder, bringing intimate scenes to the public eye. They acknowledge the intimacy of domestic space and our private lives, suggesting a path to harmony is appreciating the parts of others’ lives we don’t always see: a cup of coffee in the morning, a dinner table covered in wine glasses and flowers, a dog curled up by a window. The duality between the public sphere and private domesticity is one of the many dualities that both Chun and Britton explore in their work. These two artists often land in an in-between space: between painting and sculpture, pushing and pulling, tradition and innovation. They remind us that the tension brought about by being in-between a binary is not one that has to be evaded; rather, it can be enjoyed.
Suspense is another shared component between the work of Chun and Britton. In Britton’s Second Sleep, “draperies” made of discarded bedsheets hang in overlapping layers, supported by obscured wooden wall mounts. Ornate rose fabric falls over a pink-checkered teddy bear print, or the smiling yellow faces of an emoji-dotted sheet. Strokes of paint cover the sheets, at times to the extent that, as Britton notes, it is difficult to distinguish between the original pattern and what she has added to it. The rose-patterned fabric, which she sees as embodying tradition, is made new by way of her additions, evoking a larger tension between preservation versus creation. By suspending the antiquated and modernized fabrics together, she challenges what we readily categorize as traditional or contemporary. The display of the sheets make both past and present domestic life visible. Britton says that for her, art is important for navigating the interior and exterior world: Second Sleep blends the two.
Chun engages with a similar act of moving between interior and exterior in Make Room, which hosts a neighborhood of suspended plexiglass houses, each encasing a small painting of a domestic scene. Towards the back of the exhibit is a collection of suspended sculptures including neon lights depicting a fried egg sandwiched by two pieces of toast, alongside a living orchid and a watercolor scene of a mug of coffee atop a table. A yellow-neon structure of a house that guests can walk through acts as both an entrance and exit to the suspended sculptures. By deconstructing a house to plexiglass walls or neon beams, Chun offers us a look inside intimate spaces, while still implementing boundaries to the interior. The suspended installation lets us immerse ourselves in some of the ordinary objects that might make up our day-to-day lives, but the domestic scene hanging from the ceiling is still just beyond our physical reach.
As an onlooker, the in-betweenness in Make Room is necessary. We can observe the drawings living in the suspended houses only through tinted plexiglass; we must look up to experience the suspended installation. To be granted complete access to the domestic scenes encased by plexiglass or hanging over our heads would be to undermine the safety and intimacy of private life. Even within the tightest-knit communities, a border between personal and public life is necessary. This boundary, however, shouldn’t be absolute and unchanging. It’s the flexibility of the boundary, as Chun suggests through her use of translucent plexiglass rather than a more opaque material or no material at all, that allows us to make communities inviting and inclusive. True coexistence requires respect for the parts of others’ lives that we don’t see just as much as the parts we do.
However, this borderlike space can be a particularly uncomfortable place to inhabit for those seeking a sense of home and belonging. This is especially true for immigrants like Chun, who is originally from Seoul, South Korea. In her book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, scholar Gloria Anzaldúa coins the term “borderlands,” which she defines as “spaces—both physical and symbolic—where different cultures, identities, languages, and power systems meet, clash, and overlap, producing tension, ambiguity, and new ways of being.” Chun’s houses evoke a similar tension between joining, clashing, and ambiguity—all of which lead to new paths of existing with one another. The immigrant experience can be one of heightened uncertainty, making the familiarity and safety of a domestic space even more imperative.
Author Ursula K. Le Guin once wrote that “permanent, intolerable uncertainty” is the “only thing that makes life possible.” But welcoming this uncertainty into our lives is not an easy task. No amount of planning grants us the ability to predict what will come next—it’s impossible to know exactly how our lives will unfold. Yet, the permanent uncertainty Le Guin describes is what makes pockets of certainty and familiarity within day-to-day life feel even more important. Uncertainty is what transforms homes and domestic spaces into sanctuaries, places where it is possible to retreat from what we don’t know and can’t anticipate. In a private space, it’s okay to be somewhere in-between.
Uncertainty and in-betweenness are made inhabitable by Chun and Britton. Chun describes home as a place of “protection, safety, and intimacy.” For her, uncertainty stems from the experience of being an immigrant, and of navigating new cultural norms and changing senses of home. For Britton, this uncertainty feels tied to a tension between the old and the new. Even the name Second Sleep, which refers to a pre-industrial time where people would break their sleep up into two shifts, is a period where one is in-between asleep and awake.
In Make Room and Second Sleep, we are able to step into the parts of people’s lives that we might not otherwise have admission to. Both Chun and Britton blur and subvert conventional boundaries between the public and the personal. They both make the domestic a space worth recognizing and appreciating, taking everyday scenes and materials and making them new.
By Ruby Varallo, Halsey Institute Intern
Kenyon College, Class of 2029
English major with a minor in Studio Art