Navigating Moments

I left my birthplace many years ago. Since then, I’ve changed places, languages and homes. In my recent mixed media works I deal with the theme of home, immigration and memories, the loss of the familiar and adjustment to new conditions. What is the meaning of home? Is it a place where you feel safe, or where you leave your coat? Is it a place you come to sleep, or a place you belong to? A place that has a roof or a place that has roots? Is it even a real space or an emotional condition? How do you choose a new home and what do you take with you moving to a new place? For everyone Home corresponds with different meanings. Today, when it’s easier to travel and move to new places, the meaning of Home becomes blurred. In this series I’m trying to define the Home. But while creating these works, the definition is shifting, growing, becoming more abstract. Is it a place where you met your best friends? Is it a place that has an address or a place that has your memories and special moments? And if it’s about memories, can you pack them and take to another place? In my Home is where series I’m crossing a boundary between drawing, painting and sculpture. These works are hybrids of visually accurate representation and physical process of ripping, braking and constructing. I create them using packing materials which represent moving, yarn and thread which represent connection, knots for remembering and ripped areas for time and memories. The surface is sealed with a coating of acrylic medium for decay resistance. But metaphorically the process of applying layers of the medium represents my personal layered world where different places and cultures are connected to each other. The works relate to each other, but each individual piece has its own narrative. The larger works speak conceptually about home and place while the smaller works are more intimate, they speak about emotional impression, revealing memories of a place, a time, a perception. Through these works I’m exploring connection of knowledge and memory, meaning of home, and sensory memory of place.