Mosaic
- being Arab - end of residency check in
I came into my residency at the Arab American National Museum with a big question about what it means to be Arab/American. I didn’t know that I had already found my answer the moment I walked into the museum for the first time: Upon walking in,
I immediately noticed the beautiful mosaic covering the walls on the ground floor.
We are a mosaic made of ancient empires, lost and forgotten.
Broken up and re-arranged at random.
Some of us care, some don’t.
But the clump we are now?
Leyya said: there’s safety in conflation. Take the safety of an “us”, find your place and be as you are. It doesn’t really matter, we will be seen as we will be seen.
At a talk at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Artist Sadik Kwaish Alfaraji said that, our identity is our memory. He was talking about his work “A Thread of Light Between My Mother’s Fingers and Heaven” and about his memories back in his native home of Iraq. About how it felt to sit together at a table and share a meal, about the smells and all these little details that make a memory so vivid, it becomes a part of who you are.
I am personally still not sure what determines my identity in a way that goes beyond my own personal experiences. Maybe I will never know.
Is there a way out of the identity trap?
I guess I leave with more questions,
I guess there will always be unanswerable questions.
So now excuse me while I go back to taking pictures of windows and chairs and light bulbs.
Bye.