by Stephanie Marchena
The idea of home has inspired a range of imaginative and playful works by artists across the globe.
Exploring how artists have engaged with this theme in different contexts—from mobile homes and beach houses to haunted houses and broken homes—going home explores our complex relationships with the idea of home, and the equally complex responses in which gender, race, class, location and status overlap, and that through these relationships we turn a specific place into a home.
Through an examination of the question: “How does contemporary art address the idea of home? How do artists working today reveal and question commonly held assumptions about land, home, exile, and migration?”, students address their own ideas of home, making work employing a wide range of materials and media.
Sub questions explored during this investigation include:
- What constitutes a home?
- What do we mean when we talk about “identity”?
- How does the home reflect family values, ancestral and local culture?
- How do we feel at home? When we are away from home?
- What kinds of things affect our access to a home?
- What power dynamics play out in the home? Who decides this?
- When traveling, moving to a new home, or forced to re-locate, what parts of your “old home” would you take with you? Which values and systems of power or oppression follow you?
- How does gentrification affect urban neighborhoods?
- Who benefits from gentrification? Who loses?
