You Can Never Go Home
Abstract
My thesis exhibition, You Can Never Go Home, reflects the idea of irreconcilable, parallel
homes, one that’s here and one that’s there. Moving from Calgary, Alberta, to Waterloo,
Ontario, to pursue my Master of Fine Arts, I have used myself as a two-year case study to
examine how one might make a new place a home. The installation consists of an abundance of
handmade objects: life-sized selfies displayed in lightboxes, sculptures in the form of houses and
other symbolic buildings (some containing lightboxes and short video loops), as well as my
collections of curios, tools and building materials. As an installation, the work examines
concepts, concerns and emotions that accompany the process of moving a long distance—
longing, memory, nostalgia, absence, belonging, family, lost-ness, place, time, anxiety,
resilience, futility, humour, loneliness, rhythm and routine. It is an anxious, obsessive, yet
humourous manifestation of my attempts to feel at home in a new place, just as I am about to
leave.
Cite this version of the work
Jennifer Akkermans
(2016).
You Can Never Go Home. UWSpace.
http://hdl.handle.net/10012/10485
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