HOME SERIES x SU WU

Home is a word with many meanings — a place to rest and renew, to gather and grow, connect and commune. It means different things to different people at different times, making it a constant source of fascination and inspiration.

Through this series, we explore the meaning of home through the eyes and words of creative people who move, intrigue, and energise us.

Su Wu is a curator and writer whose 1920s home in Mexico City acts both as an intimate arena for family life and a public exhibition space for her expansive collection of art, design, and Mexican crafts. 

In this conversation, Su wisely, thoughtfully, insightfully guides us through her understanding of home, the importance of living ceremoniously, and the presence of mess in her work and life. We are so grateful to have spent this time with her.

What does home mean to you? 

Years ago when I first arrived in this city, I was in a taxi and the driver pointed at a building and said, es tu casa. And it was not my house, but in the ensuing confusion I learned that in Mexico City, the better-known saying “mi casa es tu casa” is shortened in a courteous disregard of clarity, with locals referring to their own homes as your home – as “tu casa.” I’d like this to be what home means to me.

How do you make your home a space of calm and comfort to come back to after a busy day?

I’ve struggled so long with the idea of interior and exterior, and carving out of the world a smaller world, but I suppose for me one of the most comforting indications of territory is that I am almost always barefoot when I am at home.

 'Now that I have kids and know better what mess means, I think it has made me a better curator..to be surrounded by things that I chose like my life might depend on it and that are irreplaceable’

Can you walk us through a ritual that makes you feel calm or that brings you joy?

I know ritual is necessary, like, cognitively – I know it keeps us from having to decide every time we wake up how we are meant to live. I know dedication is its own accomplishment, and necessary for us to seed gardens and care for one another, and gives shape to time and community. But ritual is the thing I probably miss most about myself now that I’m a mother, by which I mean I miss the lack of them – I’d really given up a lot for the foolish wrongheaded belief that it is possible to be true within days that were each one new and bewildering, and loosely defined. I suppose I thought of repetition as something that happens to you, at worst; at best as entrenched preferences and skin routines. Anyway, I curated a little show once about the ambiguity of ritual, a tea show, and one artist said something that has stuck, which is that it is not necessarily about following the steps that comprise a ceremony, but about living ceremoniously.

It seems as though your work as a curator crosses the boundaries of professional and personal, with your home serving as a stage for family life, on the one hand, and for showcasing your collections on the other. What has this co-existence meant for both living and working there?

More than ten years ago, I wrote: “I feel strongly about messes, that their absence is demoralising.” And now that I have kids and know better what mess means, I think it has made me a better curator, certainly a better design curator, to be surrounded by things that I chose like my life might depend on it and that are irreplaceable, but also their constant susceptibility. I mean, I think a lot about damage and repair – it is one of my big themes – but as I’ve started to collect I’ve also gotten to steep myself in how things actually wear, and have this lucky chance to understand which designers are great at the single moment and which ones have a sensitivity to the longer span. Oh! What an exhibition that could be! Of design works that had been loved by people, messy people, and used – to see spills and fading and runs and life. But anyway, what I mean is that I would trade all those pristine typewriters in MoMA’s collection for one that had been thrown across the room by a writer in a fit of despair.

 

What drew you to your pieces from the Norlha collection? How do you envision them being used in the months and years to come? 

I’m in the deeps of research for an exhibition I am curating next year on contemporary tapestry at Dallas Contemporary in Dallas, Texas, and one historical piece that came up in research that I keep thinking about is not a tapestry but this Edo-period undergarment for a Japanese samurai, made of wool (from Europe) and dyed red in cochineal (from Mexico), and all the movement of people and materials that made this textile possible. And when I saw the bright saffron colour of the signature Norlha yak khullu blanket, in that brilliant gamboge of Buddhist monk robes but also Rembrandt, it felt like a little spark of similarity, an offering of encouragement for these ideas I’m continuing, forever, to work through. 

Thank you to Su for opening up her home to us. The blankets featured in this edition of Home Series is Norlha's Handspun Nostalgia Tree Blanket in Dandelion, and Norlha's Nomad Net Throw in Natural Yak White, both 100% yak khullu. Su is wearing Norlha's Tibetan Shirt Dress in Natural Yak White, 50% yak khullu, 50% silk. Photography by Fabian Martinez.