My daughter has a close friend who often says, “I’m a millennial, which means I’ll never own a home.” What a sad comment. But it’s pretty realistic here in the Bay Area, with its elusive and over-priced homes. So that makes The House Imaginary, the new show at the San Jose Museum of Art, among the most important of the year.
Curator Lauren Shell Dickens says she began with the question: what does a single family home mean in the Bay Area today?
“In terms of today’s housing crisis, but also in terms of today’s era of mobility, and immigration,” she said. “And how can a house signify both stability and a place of refuge, but also such uncertainty in today’s world?”
Among the pieces in the show is an illustration by Carmen Lomas Garza of a Latino family eating watermelon on their front porch (above), and it’s a serene image of safety and family togetherness. And then, for contrast, there’s a drawing by Roger Shimomura of a pleasant room with a birthday cake and barbed wire visible outside the window. It’s a memory of Shimomura’s time in an Idaho internment camp during World War II, showing how a house can sometimes be a cruel prison.
The museum is also presenting a double feature on May 17 of the horror films Get Out, Jordan Peele’s creepy-home story of last year; and The Shining, Stanley Kubrick’s gothic masterpiece set in an old hotel from 1980.
