Sunmin Lee | The Woman’s House

[D]espite its external image of being a place of tranquil relaxation, a family, the arena for such things, is a place of confrontation among various emotions such as desires, frustrations, tedium, and anger. On the grounds of such problems, families were viewed from different angles. In particular, the identity of a woman within a family, and the communications between the family members were the subject matters of two private exhibitions: “The Woman’s House I”(1999), “The Woman’s House II”(2004).

This series of works, titled “The Woman’s House I”, which started in 1999, shows the tedious and exhausting daily life of young mothers, who are in their thirties, that consists of staying home and looking after the children. Marriage requires many changes within a woman’s life. The women in the photographs are living in a conflict between their dreams and the reality, and they are burying their own identity while staring tediously to the person within. “The Woman’s House II” is a series of works illustrating the absence of inter-generational communication and the role of women within a family by looking at extended families, in which people from different generations coexist. It shows the realities of the present-day patriarchal system by capturing the families comprised of three or four generations at important family reunions, and showing the glances of its members that constantly avoid one another.

(Sunmin Lee | The Woman’s House, PRIVATE 52, pages 50-55)