Our research aim was to explore the temporal, emotional and material traces of home through participatory workshops that focused on the everyday practices, experiences and memories of homemaking from a migrant perspective. Through an open call for participants, two Exploratory Ethnographic Workshops* were hosted in March and May 2023 at Dorich House Museum, the former studio-home of the migrant artist Dora Gordine, as a shared starting point for the ten participants. 

 

In response to aspects of the  ‘unhomliness’ of the curated objects and spaces, participants decided to collectively co-organise a one-day public Intervention in the studio-museum in June 2023 to materialise their senses of home and of homemaking practices. This participant-led and knowledge generating event enacted a live ‘curatorial’ methodology (Martinon, ed. 2013). It resulted in the transformation and disruption of the studio-museum spaces through sound (pre-recorded and live music), the sharing of food, personal objects and memories, collaborating on a cross-stitched tapestry, on drawings of home, and critical reflections on the everyday experiences of making home and feeling at home. 

 

Martinon, Jean-Paul ed. (2013) The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating, Bloomsbury

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For resulting exhibition See HERE.