No Place Like Home

As if dropped from the sky in the most casual fashion, this installation that recently appeared at the UC/San Diego School of Engineering, by South Korean artist Do Ho Suh, is more than just a conversation piece. Like most of his projects, Fallen Star, as it’s called, addresses notions of physical space and impermanence, eliciting questions regarding boundaries, identity, and displacement. (Modeled after a cottage in Providence, Rhode Island near where Suh once lived, the one-bedroom house is pitched at a 17-degree angle, complete with a front yard and well-furnished interior. Visitors get a real taste of what it’s like to live on the edge after a walk-through.) What I find most interesting is its contrast between bucolic and disturbing, and larger still, how it makes you wonder about so many symbols of comfort that are based on fleeting foundations, along with their fragile underpinnings. (And on a more pop-culturish level, it brings to mind a certain topsy-turvy house from The Wizard of Oz…)

(Photo: Philipp Scholz Rittermann)

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