What This Journey Breeds: April 2016

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Utilizing experiences from the RIF asylum seekers and natural produce from the Brooklyn Grange, my work deals with the intersection of sensory and emotional experience and the concept of home. I use fruit and vegetables to stain bed sheets. The natural produce recalls the idea of a meal and the comfort of home and family as an old memory, while evoking the experience of a new family in the present through urban farming at the Brooklyn Grange. Meals are a sensory experience that has emotionally tied the asylum seekers together. I used the food to stain in such a way that depicts memories and emotions throughout their journeys. The bed sheets prompt closeness to the self and vulnerable states. In my installation I suspend the fabric, much like the emotional and physical displacement that occurs during the asylum seeking process. This piece is reminiscent of a hug, a physical embrace that elicits comfort from physical contact. Both the physical suspension and staining emphasize moments of absence and presence.