Subtle Nuances

The idea of difference in displacement is one that is hard to ignore. In a new place the first thing I pick up on is the small nuances that make it unique—different from “home.” My first real encounter with this was during my semester abroad in Montpellier, France in the spring of 2007. As my first journey abroad, everything was new and exciting. Noticing all the differences between American and French culture, I realized the relationship between the two to be “grayer” than expected—that is, differences were subtle, not so stark as black and white... I found my feelings of displacement from home were in the smallest of details. For instance, the French don’t readily hand out bags at the grocery check out, and when I asked for some, I received puzzled looks. Likewise, when I folded my hands in my lap at the dinner table, instead of keeping my forearms on the table, it wasn’t seen as proper etiquette, rather, I looked as if I was hiding something from my fellow diners. In each of these scenarios and countless others, I was labeling myself as a foreigner, a non-French, and possibly an American. But equally important in these scenarios, as my actions labeled me as “different,” I too labeled the French as distinctly different from me.

Labels become an important point in displacement, like imprints that write a certain script on your language and body without your knowledge or your intent. It’s hard to see these differences while in the mix of people you associate with “home,” but once you find yourself in the midst of displacement, these nuances become glaring differences. As a camouflage mechanism, I tried to disguise my “otherness,” but in the end, I couldn’t. I had already been imprinted with a mix of southern Californian and North Carolinian. Though I attempted to live a French life, I had inevitably taken some “home” with me abroad. And equally unavoidable, as I packed my bags six months later to leave, I was leaving behind a part of my new definition of home, one that now stretches across the Atlantic.

—Melissa Cormier, Art history student, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The Nature of Alienness

I have often wondered about this strange notion of the word displacement and space—what it means in the context of who I am as a person and as an artist. Obviously there is an interest and curiosity to know how artists express ideas about life when they move from place to place or, in my case, from continent to continent. What is interesting about the whole notion of displacement is its psychological dimension of perception and reality. It demands a dialogue with oneself and occasionally with those who are curious to know the nature of alienness.

For several years I carried a green card that identified me as an alien resident. I struggled with the notion of this word alien for a while, for I came with a passport that clearly identified me as an Ethiopian and ascertained my belonging to a place, a culture, and a people. By that it further recognized that which made up the nuances of who I was and suddenly I question and the green card questioned who I am.

Suddenly one is confronted with the question 'What does this mean?'. So one becomes in need of a comfort zone and engages in searching both within and without for things familiar—both material and cultural. This is natural and acceptable by all groups who have come to the U.S. by ship or the jet.

My foundation, then as well as now, is made up of an environment that nurtured my development as a person and as an artist. It has provided me with a capacity to learn, adopt and be a contributing citizen wherever I may be in time and space. As an artist I am fortunate to have a strong sense of who I am as an African, Ethiopian, and American, but most importantly I come from a place where man originated—the Land of Dinkinash.

In my work I have tried to address issues of displacement due to man made war or famine or migration caused by political persecution in Ethiopia and Africa and at large—works in a series called Journey to the Unknown, for an example. Far from Home is not only timely but long overdue as it addresses issues via creative responses by artists who have shared personal and global experiences that are equally universal. This is a wonderful beginning as the NCMA is making progress towards a newer and enviable position in its aggressive experientially rewarding programs of exhibitions and other alternative services to its members, patrons, and the citizen of North Carolina.

—Achamyeleh Debela, Artist, featured in Far from Home; Professor of Art, North Carolina Central University

The Challenge to Remap One’s Life

Some cultures encourage movement, some treasure stability. I come for a very immobile culture. I was born and raised in an Italian city. Left for certain periods, but never ceased to consider that my home. Moves were temporary, always with a sense of return in mind. This time my family and I moved for real. Sold the house, packed all our lives and relocated across the ocean.

Moving is being displaced. It is losing one’s sense of reference, familiar routes, and places. It is reducing the complexity of lived experience while at the same time acquiring a whole range of new inputs. It is taking up the challenge to remap one’s life.

Let me explain.

Home is a place constructed through multiple layers, relationship experiences. It is an emotionally charged landscape. A place constructed through one’s personal history. My first school, the playground where I used to play as a child, my high school, the buildings where my friends and family used to live and often still do, the clubs attended in different periods of youth and adult life, the university campus, the church where I got married, the different places where I worked, administrative buildings, favorite stores, doctors offices. At home, life is an itinerary unwinding through familiar points of reference. Sometimes the map expands, new places and people are added, some are forgotten…but they are there ready to be recovered if interest or necessity arises. Being at home is a feeling of being entangled in this comforting and multilayered web that connects people and places in many and sometimes surprising ways.

Far from home one looses all this. One needs to recreate the map. Start from scratch. Everything is so difficult...yet, so excruciatingly simple. Work-home-grocery store. Pharmacy. Children’s school. Hardly a web. Hardly a network. Hardly comforting. It takes time to understand where things are. And it takes effort to understand that things might not be there the way you expect them to be. Moving—and especially moving to a different country—is a change of mind set. Even if ‘daily life’ has a sense of normalcy by its very nature, it can be experienced in many different ways: and there is nothing normal once you remove yourself from the place where your idea of ‘normal’ was constructed. It is adapting to new foods, new smells, new systems of garbage disposal, new brands of detergent, new ways of washing and drying your clothes...Mundane things, but also more connected to our sense of home and belonging than our intellectual endeavors. Things that make you feel nostalgic and out of place, even when the move was the coronation of a dream. Even when one moves for the better.

Once in a Cameroonian village I was conversing with a friend while sharing a typical local meal: the scalding fufu was burning my fingers as I was trying to dip it in the rich palm oil sauce, while attempting to extract some meat from the bony smoked fish that constituted the highlight of the meal. Of course, as it often happens, food was the topic of our dinner conversation. Mary was indeed very curious to understand how we managed to survive and feed ourselves in Europe. “See, she said to me, my sister moved to Italy six months ago and she is telling me that over there there is hardly any food to eat”. While contemplating my meager fish deboning results, I decided this was something to ponder, while dreaming of prosciutto.

–Silvia Forni, Associate Curator, Department of World Cultures, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario