Strangeland

Initially beginning as an analytical investigation into immigrant living rooms, the ‘strangeland’ project has evolved into a physical and digital space that connects generations through narratives. It deals with exploring the meaning of home and place-making within the Cypriot immigrant and refugee community. I am interested in unpacking the emotional loss of leaving a home through looking at how migration affects the way physical space is curated to recreate domestic memories. Photographing the sitters after each interview within their curated dwellings, further poses the question; to what extent are our possessions an extension of ourselves? Using the living room context as a relatable frame, this project takes form into an exhibition. The visitors experience a journey through time using ‘spatial narrative’ techniques including sensory stimulation, film and photography. One other physical outcome of the ‘strangeland’ project is the ‘pink chair’ that is touring the UK in grassroot exhibitions, promoting important conversations surrounding, home as well as the fractured Cypriot identity. Inspired from the social research I undertook, each text doiley represents an individual’s experience, their story. Breathing new life into old pieces, the chair is transformed into a physical piece of recorded narrative history.