Thesis Format
Alternative Format
Degree
Master of Fine Arts
Program
Visual Arts
Supervisor
Migone, Christof
Abstract
Together with my Master of Fine Art thesis exhibition, still, unfolding, at Zalucky Contemporary (Toronto, Ontario), this dossier constitutes the following accompanying components: a comprehensive artist statement, documented artwork, an interview with artist Erika DeFreitas, and a curriculum vitae. These components contextualize my subject-position, and outline theoretical research, motivations, and reflections that drive my work. I expand on the diasporic experience, politics of knowledge, and the autobiographical genre as they are linked methodologies in the retrieval of immigrant histories. The fusion of autobiography and fiction becomes a hopeful approach in challenging forgotten or omitted history and confronts the expectations that immigrant artists provide an insider role to a culture. Meanings, practices, and memories are re-inscribed in the diaspora; my practice recognizes the everyday negotiation between resistance and surrender to the colonial through material considerations. Concepts of aesthetic fragmentation and the value of found materials explored in my artistic practice through collage are informed by memory work and trauma theory to emphasize the continuous state of arrival for nomadic people.
Summary for Lay Audience
People who move to a country different from their origin bring with them culture and tradition that is adapted to their new host country. By translation and transformation, migrants show many different ways that their culture and traditions from their homeland survive. My research is focused on how these traces can be seen in the everyday. I use collage, textile, photography, and digital media to recognize what is overlooked in history. My own experience of migration and family history inform my art practice; at the same time, because I work with memory work, my work is aware of its unreliability and limit. Even though something is lost in every retelling, translation, movement, something is also to be gained.
Recommended Citation
Laruan, Ramolen Mencero, "still, unfolding" (2020). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 7319.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/7319
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Included in
Asian American Studies Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons, Fine Arts Commons, Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons, Photography Commons, Printmaking Commons, Sculpture Commons, Visual Studies Commons, Women's Studies Commons