Constructing a Place of Belonging

This thesis examines the ways displacement is reflected in artistic practices dealing with land, landscape and geography. Land is addressed here as context for histories of displaced persons and it is assumed that connection with the environment affects the human sense of belonging. The theories presented in this essay contextualize practices that turn to subjects of land and displacement approaching them in the light of embodied1 cognition. By investigating emergent and alternative patterns of agency that these theories offer, I trace a current epistemological shift described by a curator and theorist Irit Rogoff which resituates a theory of cognition within lived experience. This shift is important for considering the phenomenon of re-building a "sense of place"2 after the rupture of displacement - as a process of identity and knowledge formation. My research views painting as a practice of agency in examining the experience of concrete subjects rather than seeking formal, transcendental conditions of subjectivity. Employing a theory of embodied cognition I approach the matter of land as place and abstracted landscape painting as an artistic practice and an attempt to actively re-build my own sense of belonging. Through a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in the "representational events"3 of similar practices it is my intention to create a context for my own practice of painting. Work of Ana Mendieta, Julie Mehretu, Huma Bhabha, Joshua Neustein, and Anselm Kiefer is referenced in this paper for evidence of how living away from one's home country or questioning its history is reflected in artists‘ work. I test the potential of embodiment theory and terminology application within the realm of these practices. As an immigrant I had to forge a new identity in adopted environment. In this thesis I intend to elevate the subject of displacement and migration from the matter of universal empathy to the level of identity and knowledge formation. I examine stages in my own new identity development from the rupture of displacement to the awareness of being defined by several cultures. I register how different cultural ways of seeing overlap and influence each other in my work.