home, belonging: Keith (name)

home, belonging Piece 6/11. Throughout my body of work, I consider the relationship of past and present and the significance of that relationship to a place of origin for a diasporic person. A diasporic person is often asked to negotiate their multiple identities as they recontextualize cultural belonging - without claiming a fixed home which may erase those multiple identities. In predominantly Anglo-Euro American spaces in the U.S., a diasporic person is often associated with a place of origin or homeland. That "place of origin" is loaded with previous assumptions, knowledge, stereotypes, or classifications. If a diasporic person does not identify solely, or at all with that homeland, suddenly the differences between them and someone with an Anglo-Euro background become less identifiable as a claim of origin, resulting in other cultural signifiers being activated to validate their identity claims.