RE- LOCATE INSTALLATION
Site specific installation
Jan 25 -March 6 2022
Creative spaces
Assembly Point, Melbourne 5 Glass vitrines between Sturt Street and Moore Street
Supported by artsACT HOMEFRONT grant
Photo: Alex Asch
After forty years in Australia, I returned to my country of birth, Ecuador. This pilgrimage allowed me to explore the ancestral history of my family which previously had existed only in my childhood memories and the magic realism of South American writers and artists that I had absorbed. My art practice has often reflected on my sense of displacement and my family’s migration to Australia.
Within this site-specific installation, I explore the idea that the home is housed within the individual and can travel and survive migration and displacement. The work reflects universal issues of identity, connectivity, survival, urbanization, and a shifting environment through climate change. Migrants are drawn to the city, they can find their place in the melting pot, recognisable odours and tastes can be recreated in their new neighbourhoods, communities, and diasporas.
The reclaimed wool blankets replete with their domestic histories shroud and wrap the tableaux concealing the anxiety of social unrest and global pandemic, highlighting the fragility of an impermanent home. At the centre of my installation is an alteration of recycled materials and environmental debris.