Iliana Ortega Alcázar

Whose home is it? Loss and mending

My work explores issues around home and belonging. It looks at the everyday and intimate processes of making a home in the context of migration and the loss of this sense of belonging as a result of the rise of nationalist and xenophobic discourses and policies worldwide. Within this broader theme, my work focuses on the concept of loss and the resulting act of ‘mending’. I draw attention to the fragility of belonging and attachment to place, the agency that goes with making a home in a new place, and the labour involved in mending when this is threatened or broken.

I approach my subject matter through a personal lens and abstract language to invite the viewer to reflect on these intimate experiences of displacement, with the intention of revealing what the prevailing divisive discourses in the public / political realm often mask. Through a laborious process of layering photo transferred images, graphite and acrylic paint my work echoes the act of homemaking, unmaking and mending. Images that represent belonging are printed on canvas and then partially erased with washes of paint, then another layer of photo transfer is laid to be erased with paint and so on. This iterative process brings attention to how, as homes are made, lost and later repaired, new subjectivities emerge.