Mary Jhun: In losing Sleep, I Painted
March 15–June 15, 2025
In Losing Sleep, I Painted chronicles Mary Jhun’s intimate struggle with sleep, disrupted by the very machine meant to heal her. Through the lens of her signature figures, The Girls, Jhun explores her uneasy relationship with the CPAP—a treatment for Sleep Apnea—unraveling the delicate threads between dreams, their hidden metaphors, and the restless nights that shape them. Over three months, she documented the weight of irregular sleep, the sting of tearful awakenings, and the slow descent into idiopathic insomnia. In its entirety, the series becomes her answer to a haunting question: What does it mean to be tethered to something meant to save you, yet feel no relief?
About The Artist
Known for her surreal and intertwining style, Mary Jhun uses her iconic style to explore how changes in her sleep patterns and daily life due to the use of a sleep machine. Interlocking psychology to biology of plants and architecture, Jhun creates stories through unpacking the mechanics of our deeper emotions.
Jhun’s goal is to allow the viewer to feel understood, to question what they see, and to understand reality through a deeper lens, outside of the norm and into a place beyond realism. Her imagery of “The Girls” represents an inner self, one that is culminated in many alternate versions of what is or can be. More than a feeling, a timeframe, or a product of a certain reaction, The Girls can be both feminine and masculine. They have been the main focus of her documentation of surviving everyday life, past and present, a result of 20 years of obsession with this motif helped her to cope with traumatic experiences.
Her work can be seen in numerous homes and offices throughout the country, and public murals can be found all over San Diego and a few in Northern California. Her working studio is located in Escondido.
EXHIBITION CELEBRATION
Saturday, May 3, 2025, 5:00-7:00pm
(Members free, Visitors $15)