Inhabiting Whiteness: On Architecture, Collecting, and the Everyday

This chapter explores the intersection of architecture, art collecting, and domestic space. It examines homes exhibitions that embody architectural philosophies and enacted cultural values, highlighting how objects and spaces contribute to cultural expression and identity formation. Through an analysis of the Van Eycks' curatorial practices, it demonstrates how they used their home as an experimental space that blurred the boundaries between exhibition and habitation, performance and everyday life. Their personal collection of avant-garde and ethnographic objects served not only as aesthetic inspiration but also as a reflection of their broader architectural goals to merge diverse cultural elements. Drawing from feminist and post-colonial theories, their home-exhibition is critically assessed for its role in shaping spatial experience and for its entanglement with colonial legacies, engaging with the complexities of art collecting in a post-colonial context. By framing their home as an exhibition, the chapter highlights the Van Eycks' contribution to redefining architectural discourse through assemblage, materiality, and cross-cultural interactions, while positioning their domestic interior as an active and problematic site of cultural and architectural enactment.