File:Serap-kacmaz-patterns-documentation.pdf
This artistic research explores the relationship between migration, domestic space, and the ways in which a sense of home is shaped by uncertainty. It began with a personal question: What if I have to leave? Since arriving in Germany, this question has followed me from one room to another. I became interested in spaces that are neither entirely temporary nor entirely permanent, and in the different ways people inhabit them. How do we make a place our own when its permanence is uncertain? How much do we invest in a space, and what do we choose to bring into it?
During the research, I visited the rooms of friends who moved to Germany from other countries. I became interested in the different ways people make a space their own.Through furnishing or not furnishing, and through different forms of intervention. The visits also became conversations, revealing stories connected to the objects and spaces people live with.
Portraiture became part of the research as a way of looking at the relationship between people and their domestic spaces. Inspired by Herlinde Koelbl's Das Deutsche Wohnzimmer, I asked each person to choose where they wanted to be photographed within their room.
The research is ongoing and continues to develop through encounters with different people, spaces, objects, and stories.
References
- Burcu Doğramacı, The Migratory Living Room: Dwelling and Furnishing in a Foreign Land
- Herlinde Koelbl, Das Deutsche Wohnzimmer
- Stefanie Bürkle, MigraTouriSpace: Raummigration und Tourismus, Jovis, 2021