This work is a part of my solo show "Nowhere to Go but Anywhere", taking place in the Migration Museum in London, 2024
It is a part of a series representing 4 roots of self, according to Salman Rushdie. It is a free hanging canvas with a pocket on the top.
‘These are four roots of the self: language, place, community and custom. But in our age, the great age of migration, many of us have at least one of those roots pulled up. We move away from the place we know, away from the community that knows us, to a place where the customs are different and, perhaps, the most commonly spoken language is one we do not know, or if we speak - we speak it badly and cannot express in the subtleties what we think and who we are.
...
The migrant too is at first a tree standing without its roots, trying not to fall. Migration is an existential act, stripping us of our defences, mercilessly exposing us to a world that understands us badly,
if at all; as if the earth were stripped of its atmosphere and the sun were to bear down upon it in all
its pitiless force.”
- Salman Rushdie
‘Language of Truth’