Magdalen Road Studio Box PrintExchange 'CommUnity'
Title: “Remembering Barto”
Year: 2018
Medium: Etching
Image Size: 10cm x 14.5cm
Paper Size: 28cm x 35cm
This etching was made in a very particular context at the end of my second year at the Slade, though it was not printed till this summer for the MRS print exchange project. At the time I was in exile; isolated; disconnected from a sense of belonging to a community. I had been forced to emigrate to Canada with my parents; a move that I experienced as an exile. In the years that followed, I went on to live in a number of different countries for short periods of expatriation, always on the move, never belonging. This rather nomadic mode of life intensified my sense of isolation.
These experiences have led to my rather reclusive art practice in which I react to my environment as an individual within a greater ensemble that knows no borders, no boundaries, no restrictive definitions of identity. While reflecting on the notion of community for this project, I experienced a certain malaise. I realise that living in France, my country of adoption, my perception has been influenced by the French republican values. The very fact that the notion of community is defined as demarcating oneself from the others based on certain shared characteristics and attitudes carries a very negative connotation. Belonging to a particular community
would mean setting out demarcations; something that would imply segregation and rejection of the other.