Open Collections

Displaced displacement : an a/r/tographic performance of experiences of being unhomed

University of British Columbia

This study is an a/r/tographic living inquiry that investigates the theme of displacement through visual and textual performances of my experiences of being un/homed. It is an aesthetic (and not anesthetic) self-exploration of my struggles of in-betweenness and unbelonging through and with/in multiple layers of my identity as a Persian-Canadian, and emigrant/immigrant artist, researcher, learner, and teacher. Additionally, this work draws on post-colonial literature to analyze the journey of an artist, researcher and teacher sharing her personal experiences as an emigrant/immigrant struggling with absence and loss, trying to make a place to belong. In the pedagogical process/product of this living performance, I re-visit, and re-member my lived and living struggles with the concepts of home, language, Othering, invisibility, exoticism, pain and ethics, and critically analyze those struggles through a post-colonial lens. What is re-presented throughout this dissertation is a critical self-exploration through art creation (photographs and video installations) and writing. I suggest that through the process of visually/textually writing about home one can create a home for oneself in the spaces of one’s creation. I highlight the significance of the pedagogical moments of being together, with pain and I call for a sensitive pedagogy of representation in art education.

Text

2012-12-20

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/43730

Curriculum Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/