MIGRATION PROVOCATION:

MIGRATION, IDENTITY, BELONGING AND CITIZENSHIP - WHAT DO THEY MEAN TO YOU?


Kate Genever - Migration, identity, belonging and citizenship - what do they mean to you?

I belong to the land of my family farm, I know because I'm drawn back, I'm engaged in its welfare, I care. I'm embedded because of a family history, an investment of time, a community - I feel too the love coming back, my relationship with this place is reciprocated - I am it and it is me, we are continous - it is home. This home informs the artist in me and the thinking around this residency.

I've been focusing on how we migrate from one state or way of knowing and being to another internally and how that move is hard won but results in us, in part, being born anew.

A friend and I were talking about the refugee issue and he compared the people he works with to Odysseus who met monsters and whaling women on his mammoth home-coming. He called them 'hero journeyers of a modern age'. I liked this, it's a good description, useful too for reflection on the idea that we are all at somepoint Odysseus battling to make it to a place we can call home.


Katie Numi Usher - Migration, identity, belonging and citizenship - what do they mean to you?

So closely related it is almost impossible to speak of one without the other.

Identity, for me, is the essence, the "ness" while I feel that Migration and citizenship are political constructs.

Well don't we all fly about, and aren't we all from somewhere? These things are innate to us, but the politicization of each is, in my humble opinion, is what causes much conflict. 

Belonging is essential, and sometimes goes against the grain of citizenship. Well often it is the case, that where one is born, is not where one belongs ideologically, financially or emotionally or all three.



 

Migration is international residency, bringing together artists from India, Mexico, Belize and the UK to work alongside each other in Wakefield throughout May 2017. In response to the theme of ‘Migration’, the artists will develop new work that engages with the city and its people.