Sunken Garden

Sunken Garden is a site-specific group exhibition taking place in the courtyard of a 1922 Andrew Rebori–designed building in Chicago. The exhibition explores the poetic and political implications of the “sunken garden”—a lowered, sheltered space that becomes both refuge and metaphor. In situ works by Chicago-based artists engaged with architecture, ecology, and material innovation will recontextualize this private courtyard, challenging its boundaries and historical function.

The term “sunken” evokes not only the garden’s spatial quality but also the global crisis of sea level rise and the precarious future of the built environment. Through installations, interventions, and performances, artists will explore urgent questions of housing, environmental degradation, and speculative futures. The exhibition asks: How do we design for resilience? What new forms of inhabitation can emerge in response to ecological collapse?

By activating a residential courtyard—a space typically closed to the public—Sunken Garden raises alternative paths for collective engagement, architectural imagination, and critical spatial practices.

A special exhibition opening event will take place on Sunday, September 21, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Presented by Alexis de Chaunac and Brooke Hummer. Exhibiting artists: Alexis de Chaunac invitees Max Guy, Mauricio López F., Alberto Ortega Trejo, Leticia Pardo, and Frank Vega; Brooke Hummer invitees Josué Esaú, Alice Hargrave, Rodrigo Lara, and Monika Plioplyte.

Note: a few steps are required to enter the sunken garden.