Reimagining Home: A New Place of Belonging

Safe At Home examines the notion of home, dislocation, migration, and belonging. It reflects on how we renegotiate place by confronting notions of vulnerability and sanctuary within the realm of the domestic space. The work aims to evoke the shift of identity and points towards the reinvention of self when a house is no longer a home and a life must be left behind. The immigrant experience entails a continuous settling and resettling, a negotiation with belonging and identity, and a constant reckoning with who we are, and where we belong - a process that is open and ongoing. The experience of migration, constant adaptability, and shifting perspectives, fundamentally shape today's contemporary society. Externalizing the experience of diasporic body, which shifts, mutates, and remains indefinite, the work suggests that home is a flexible concept.

Through my work I intend to reflect on my own story of immigrating to Canada from the former Yugoslavia in the late 1980s by connecting my personal experiences to current global issues. My exploration of identity and home is wrapped up in my exploration of what it means to be an artist in the ever-shifting circumstances, and how material practices can make sense of the world we live in. My work addresses migration, borders, and settlement; but also speaks from a place of feminist practices and motherhood; it is about displacement, adaptation, risk, and possibility.

- Vessna Perunovich