Body Armor Backpack, Keep It Cute Edition™, 2021

Body Armor Backpack, Keep It Cute Edition™ integrates a backpack, ring light, and oversized smartphone to envision a body camera for civilians, making an ironic pairing of selfie tools with notions of bodily protection. Over the past year and a half, videos taken on phones, surveillance cameras, and police body cameras have given way to a new form of social awareness and accountability. Darnella Frazier, a 17-year-old bystander, used her smartphone to record and share a video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, sparking an outcry for racial justice and providing key evidence that led to Chauvin's conviction for murder. Security footage from a Manhattan lobby captured building staff closing the entrance door while a vicious attack on Filipino American senior Vilma Kari occurred feet from the building’s entrance. In Chun’s sculpture, the smartphone’s surface is covered in reflective material, asking one to consider their own actions, allyship, and responsibility in these times.

Hard Pants Illusions, 2021

Totem 2020: Days of Our Lives, 2021

Totem 2020: Days of Our Lives is a homage to the humble soap products that helped keep individuals safe and clean during the COVID-19 pandemic. The title references soap operas, as many watched the heroic efforts of frontline workers online and on television, safely distanced from any real threat while sheltering in place at home.

Handba 2.0, 2021

Handba 2.0 features four female hands balanced on top of a Roomba-like vacuum. Each holds an object representing different activities: smartphone for working, spray bottle for cleaning, spoon with spaghetti for cooking, and a stuffed animal for parenting. The fantastical soft sculpture is in response to the overwhelming amount of multi-tasking asked of working parents during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zoom Heirloom, 2020

Chairgressions: Chatter, 2020

Chairgressions is a series that combines off-the-shelf seating with sculptural interventions to represent contemporary anxieties that prevent us from ever fully relaxing. Chairgressions: Chatter highlights the pressures to stay current on all things through listening to podcasts, reading the news, and scrolling social media. The proliferation of the “hot take”—quick response commentary—in the news cycle consumes our attention during what might typically have been proverbial down time.

Chairgressions: Climate, 2021

Chairgressions is a series that combines off-the-shelf seating with sculptural interventions to represent contemporary anxieties that prevent us from ever fully relaxing. In Chairgressions: Climate, Chun replicates the night-blooming Peruvian Apple Cactus whose flowers have a limited pollination period of one night as a metaphor for the fragility of our ecosystem and the limited time left to preserve it.

Chairgressions: Consumption, 2021

Chairgressions is a series that combines off-the-shelf seating with sculptural interventions to represent contemporary anxieties that prevent us from ever fully relaxing. Chairgressions: Consumption is a totem to all things consumed and yet to be consumed, from home-batch sourdough starters to videos of Instagram sensation Bread Face compulsively pushing her face into a variety of breads and, in her own words, “giving the people something they didn’t ask for.”

Qabal, 2021

Qabal is a witty take on the pervasive influence of QAnon—a far-right conspiracy theory about liberal politicians forming a cabal of Satan worship and child sex-trafficking—among ordinary Americans. “You are the news now” is a rally cry often circulated through QAnon’s online forum, emboldening individuals to use their platforms to promote the scheme. The circle of rabbits implies the echo chamber created by conspiracy message boards and gestures to the unsubstantiated child sex-trafficking ring at the center of the plot. Chun was specifically influenced by a sentence in Adrienne LaFrance’s article in The Atlantic where the writer notes that a QAnon follower “could be a mother, picking leftovers off your [her] toddler’s plate.” Borrowing from the visual vocabulary of mommy influencers on social media, Qabal adopts mylar balloon letters and cute plush toy animals to imagine what a QAnon mommy might post to create her own “news.”

Museum of Oat Dreams (for One), 2020

Museum of Oat Dreams (for One) is a response to the proliferation and popularity of immersive pop-up experiences like Color Factory and Museum of Ice Cream, exhibitions intended not to educate nor inspire, but rather optimized to function as backdrops for selfies shared on social media. Chun's piece was directly inspired by Museum of Ice Cream's sprinkle pools, but instead features a spilled carton of Oatly, a vegan milk substitute with a cult-like following. Chun’s selection of Oatly in this context highlights the paradox of a brand that promotes environmental sustainability while being backed by Blackstone, a private equity firm with connections to deforestation and extreme politics.

#ourstew, 2020

#ourstew is Chun’s version of American food writer, chef, and internet personality Alison Roman’s Spiced Chickpea Stew with Coconut and Turmeric that has become infamous as The Stew. Chun’s sculptural version is larger than life to match The Stew’s level of fame (one can even follow it on Instagram at #thestew). The Stew became popular with millennials due to its simplicity (chickpeas, coconut milk, and turmeric), affordability, and attractive presentation on social media. In terms of quarantine-enforced home cooking, Chun “imagined people opening their cupboards and blankly staring at the 9 cans of chickpeas they’d bought in a panic. I [she] imagined the relief they felt in remembering they could make something warm and comforting following a recipe that calmly and confidently told them what to do, step by step.” Collectively, through making and sharing, it became our stew.

Pizzaiolo Rat, 2020

In 2015, an enterprising rat became an overnight Internet sensation after it was captured on video dragging a slice of pizza larger than itself down the grungy steps of a New York City subway station before ultimately abandoning it when the situation became too difficult. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chun imagined that the rat, like its human counterparts, was forced to make its own pizza at home. In the case of Pizzaiolo Rat, the rodent drags his reusable bag home from the store filled with artisanal ingredients, which proves to be a more difficult load to maneuver on the stairs than a single slice of New York pizza.

Prime Hermit, 2021

Prime Hermit is a handmade version of a single-use delivery envelope—white with bright blue text and a yellow sticker—that once held an item ordered from Amazon. Inside the discarded package is a stuffed coral-colored hermit crab peeking out from its repurposed home. The sculpture is simultaneously adorable and disturbing as it points to human consumption and its effect on the natural environment. One might find a sympathetic connection with the hermit crab when considering the way in which the COVID-19 pandemic required us to seek shelter and use online ordering to avoid interactions with others.

UberLift XL, 2021