Other Landscapes is a multimedia installation, comprised of four artworks (photography, sculpture, sound, and book), that addresses the themes of memory, immigration and displacement with a novel approach to the still life. This project is the result of my extensive research in the fields of art history and botany, and includes in-depth fieldwork with refugees from the region that stretches from Southwest Asia to North Africa, historically labelled as the “Orient.”
The body of photographic works focusing on items chosen by participants is created in a studio. Besides their personal belongings, there are also intangible components linked to their memories, such as scents and taste—ingredients used in the recipes that have been passed down in their families. All linked to the geography of a specific location, each photograph is treated as a portrait that reflects the migration stories of the participants.
Reversing the tradition— “Oriental” immigrants placing their special objects in a Western visual frame—, I use these still life photographs to offer a reinterpretation and re-appropriation of the genre and engage in a decolonialist reading of it.
