Always Strange, Always the Stranger: A Practice Based Creative Enquiry into Migration and Object

Abstract

Immigration is a process that generally happens once in a lifetime. This investigation begins with the immigration process as experienced by my family over three successive generations with each generation experiencing this more than once. This phenomenon, specifically personal experiences of immigration, is prevalent in contemporary research and creative narratives, however, few examples draw on the effects of multiple intergenerational migration. As a crafts-based practice-led artist I have investigated object meaning in relation to migration, family history, and self-identity. Building understanding through a framework of autoethnography.

Over time the connections to extended family have been fractured, and in trying to keep those connections alive this research finds that inherited objects have become a method to pass on the stories of extended family. Concepts that support the emergence of this understanding of embodied feeling of loss or connection through material and include work in the miniature outlined by Gaston Bachelard and Susan Stewart, the writings on inheritance by Marjan Unger, Petra Ahde-deal, Heidi Paavilainen and Ilpo Koskinen, and the souvenir with Rolf Potts and Susan Stewart.

The creative outcomes of the research for Always Strange, Always the Stranger which include artworks of installations and jewellery were exhibited in the SCA Project Space at the University of Sydney, August 2023. In summary, this paper unpacks how theoretical concepts of the miniature, inheritance, and the souvenir can help others understand their personal identity and positionality as inheritors, migrants and artists.