The aim of my project, The Journey Home, is to develop a body of cross-disciplinary art work that combines digital text with images and objects to create a new narrative about the links between language, cultural displacement and identity. I will use the story of my mother’s journey from Riga to Australia at the end of WWII as the starting point for visually exploring the construction of identity through two languages – English and Latvian – and two cultures – Australian and Latvian.

The ideas driving my practice are based on a series of post-structural concepts about the links between language and identity: firstly, that language, or text, does not mirror reality and as a result, that truth is an arbitrary construction; secondly, that identity (or our subjective sense of self, which is both shaped and restricted through language) is fragmented but yearns for wholeness; and thirdly, that a sense of wholeness and the desire for meaning is made possible through the constant re-narration of stories about ourselves. In particular, I am interested in Richard Rorty’s proposition that language and narrative are tools that enable us to retell, redescribe and reinvent ourselves and our histories. As stories are told and retold, meaning becomes a network of endless possibilities -  there is no closure, only the continual redescribing of the self and the world. Thus text becomes a literal and conceptual material for ‘reweaving’ identity and moving towards a sense of wholeness and meaning.

During the residency I will  work with text as a conceptual and digital material, using Latvian and English in combination with still and moving images as well as objects associated with my mother’s journey. My aim is to create work that interweaves text, technology and installation to re-narrate my mother’s story and the experience of living between two cultures.

The development of the Project can be followed at: http://brigitaozolins.com/

Brigita Ozoliņš

Brigita Ozoliņš is an artist and academic who lectures in Art and Design Theory at the Tasmanian School of Art. Her art explores the links between language, history, bureaucracy and identity and usually takes the form of installation. Her work is often text-based and site-specific, and sometimes incorporates ritualistic writing performances. Brigita has received numerous artist grants and has undertaken residencies in London, Paris and two historic sites in Tasmania. She is the Tasmanian recipient of the 2008 Qantas Inaugural Contemporary Art Award, which has made it possible for her to undertake the e-t+t residency.

Brigita.Ozolins@utas.edu.au