February Issue 2002
Three Exhibits Explore Place / Displacement at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
Displace. I. To move from the usual place or
position, esp. to force to leave a homeland. Displacement. 4.
Psychiat.:A defense mechanism in which emotion, affect, or desires
shift from the original object to a more acceptable or immediate
substitute.
Immigrants, ethnic identity, and ties to a homeland: the media has made much of these subjects in recent months. Through April 6, three CDS exhibitions in Durham, NC, invite visitors to examine experiences of place and displacement and what they mean over time and in different cultural contexts. Documentary artists from diverse backgrounds bring to the CDS galleries their experiences of leaving home, searching for new roots, struggling with cultural barriers, and facing fragmentary lives.
Tuba Öztekin, a Turkish artist now living in Texas, delves into geographical, cultural, and emotional displacement through her multimedia installation, using projected portraits and bilingual audio. In a separate gallery, students from Randolph County, NC, tell through narratives and collage their stories of migration from Mexico and life in a new world. In the third exhibit, photographs and writing bring to light the experiences of Aussiedler, ethnic German immigrants from Eastern Europe and former Soviet Asia who have returned to their homeland, only to discover that they are foreigners in an unfamiliar world.
Inside/Outside: An Installation by Tuba Öztekin will be on view in the Juanita Kreps Gallery. Inside/Outside is an exhibit to be fully experienced, not simply seen. In this installation of photographic projections and bilingual audio (English/Turkish), artist Tuba Öztekin examines the ways that point of view, perspective, and experience can alter the meaning of images. She relates these questions to more universal experiences of displacement - geographical, cultural, and emotional that touch us all. What does it mean to belong to a new place? How do we create a sense of belonging in a foreign or a different place?
In the gallery, the visitor moves through and around a series of curtain-like scrims, viewing and walking among portraits that are projected onto the fabric. Öztekin shot the photographs - of relatives, friends, and acquaintances in her native Turkey using a pinhole camera. Their images take on life with the light and movement of the exhibit, and observers become part of the installation as their shadows move through it and their passage shifts their point of view. "I am using the curtain as a metaphorical symbol to show the differences between east and west, inside or outside," Öztekin says. "A curtain both reveals and conceals. It can keep you out or in."
"My objective is to bring attention to the nature of transitory living experiences by setting up an imaginary or virtual window," she says. "The curtain makes me aware of the space between myself and the space between the viewer and the image; it is intentionally open to encourage viewers to insert themselves into this realistic and fictive state. The space illuminates the sense of estrangement. This is meant to be a diasporic experience and hopefully creates a sense of displacement."
The audio portion of the installation uses fragments of memory, conscious and unconscious moments, from both past and present.
Ni de Aqui / Ni de Alla, Not from Here / Not from There is an exhibit by students from Randolph County, NC, on view in the Lounge Gallery.
Viewed as an exhibit and organized in a hand-bound book, the narratives and artwork (paste paper collage) of students from Randolph County, North Carolina. tell powerful stories of migration and adjustment in a new culture. In Ni de Aqui / Ni de Alla, Not from Here / Not from There young people from the Randolph County AIM (Action, Inspiration, Motivation) Club "write frankly about the barriers in their lives," says Robert Shreefter, a writer and artist-in-residence who coordinated the project. "All tell of missing and longing for Mexico; feeling the hurt of racism; feeling far from parents as they speak more English and become 'less' Mexican. Many identify problems in school with language difficulties and difficulties being understood."
Some of these experiences are painful and private, difficult to speak about with peers and adults. "However, participants became more relaxed and comfortable telling their stories as they overcame their initial surprise that their stories were important or that their lives were to be the subject of writing and illustration," Shreefter says. "Here is a rich but unused resource for the school and community: an articulate and expressive group of students that have the worries, though magnified, that all teenagers feel about fitting in; that have the ability to speak in two languages and to know two cultures; that mirror the long history of migrants who have come to America the resilience to make a new home, learn a new language, live with and confront daily occurrences of bigotry."
Ni de Aqui / Ni de Alla, Not from Here / Not from There is a project of the Center for Documentary Studies, Student Action with Farmworkers, Randolph County AIM Club, and Randolph County Migrant Education.
Returning Home: Stories of Aussiedler In Germany is on exhibit in the Porch Gallery.
In recent years, new emigration and asylum laws opened the door for ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe and former Soviet Asia to return to their homeland. Yet many of these immigrants - called "Aussiedler," meaning literally "out-settlers," or "Spataussiedler" ("late out-settlers"), referring to those who have arrived since 1994 - now find themselves foreigners in modern German society and culture. Returning Home: Stories of Aussiedler in Germany is a collection of the rich and diverse experiences of Aussiedler living in Jena, Germany. A collaboration between Ellen Eischen, a descendent of Germans who fled from the Volga village of Neu-Frank and settled in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the photographer Marcy Levy, Returning Home brings together the stories these new immigrants shared over two years.
Returning Home also includes family portraits and the voices of "Aussiedler" adolescents and children, who tell about their lives through writing, photography, and drawings. The exhibit presents diverse perspectives on "Aussiedler," how they view themselves and how others view them, and includes voices from America, Germany, Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, Romania, and Russia. Raising issues of population migration, diversity, integration, and remembrance that resonate in many communities, Returning Home touches on the experiences of immigrants and refugees everywhere.
Returning Home is supported by the Hart Fellows Program at Duke University, the Bernard van Leer Foundation, and the Trent Foundation, with help from the Jena Methodist Church Social Service Program and the Heinrich-Heine Grade School in Jena, Germany.
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