Islands
This entry is about my on-going project (be)longing which looks at themes of race, heritage, transracial adoption and estrangement. Click here to read all of the posts on this topic.
For about a year or so I’ve been making work in all manners about islands: inks, drawings, writings.
I hadn’t really pieced it together until recently. Sometimes I look back at things in my studio and go… huh… that’s interesting.
Last night I had a dream where different versions of myself were alone on individual islands. Each version of myself was a different age and I would watch people almost making it to the shores before they would drift off into the distance, leaving me to look out into the endless waters.
There’s something about not having family, not belonging to a family, not belonging in so many respects that makes you feel like an island of one. Sometimes I’m like an archipelago, and I’m drifting out on the open waters and all I discover is myself as the sole inhabitant of each one of the islands that I discover.
Estrangement is dreadful because despite you choosing to disconnect from others, it leaves you with a deep sense of being alone, whether you feel lonely or not. It’s like circling your own island simultaneously guarding it from and wanting to welcome visitors to it.
Forced estrangement is different - all the questions you had about what could have been, go unanswered, caught up in the winds.