Daphne & Doris: What is a Nation? (Digital Collage, 2022)
Ongoing series of digital collages exploring issues of migration and the idea of national identity/nations.
What is a nation?
“a country, especially when thought of as a large group of people living in one area with their own government, language, traditions, etc.” (Cambridge Dictionary)
“a large group of people of the same race who share the same language, traditions, and history, but who might not all live in one area” (Cambridge Dictionary)
What is migration?
“the process of people traveling to a new place to live, usually in large numbers” (Cambridge Dictionary)
Calle 60. February 4, 2020. 1:31 pm.
These photographs were all taken in February 2020 and document what I felt as the world slowly came to a halt around me. Living in a small rented house in a primarily Mexican neighbourhood, I did not speak the language and yet I felt frozen in place. The streets became quieter as the locals began staying home and fewer tourists arrived. News from Asia of a new virus, one that seemed particularly communicable and deadly, had begun to enter the everyday conversations of travellers in the Americas. I began to focus on the brightly coloured painted walls of the buildings that lined the streets of central Merida.
In 2018 I undertook a research trip to Morocco and while there I visited a traditional pottery production operation. Outside the buildings, near the kiln and overlooking the cliffside, there was a single man with a wooden mallet breaking up raw clay by hand.