HOME IS…

Through portraiture, staged tableaux and costuming I use photography to explore and invoke rituals of home and home-making. Most recently, this has taken the form of largescale color photographs created outside of, but in relationship to my home in Nigeria. Borrowing from […]

Borrowing from the city of Dusseldorf’s colorful carnival, which celebrates festivities just before the lent (fasting), I enacted a performance of home rituals as a way of rooting deeply into this new space I inhabited. My project explored the questions of identity and feelings of belonging in a foreign land (Germany) such as: How do we feel at home where ‘non- belonging’ is prevalent?; how do we get the psychological contentment of acceptance?; Are we doomed always to yearn for what we can’t have?

Home becomes a space we carry with us and invoke when necessary.

The city of Dusseldorf’s carnival had the dominant colors of red and white. These are also the state colors as they can be seen on the flags. These colors are also symbolic in the Yoruba culture where I come from. The color red (Sango) which is used as a representation of feelings of resentment and fury/anger, while white (Yemoja) is peace. These were representations of varying emotions I encountered. Candies are part of the food items used as offering to Yemoja. The candies I received during the carnival was also used as a peace offering in my performance (images).

These similarities in practices exposed me to our connectedness and relatedness.