In Place: Visualising Migrant and Diasporic Home-making in Contemporary London

My project investigates how the visual depiction of domestic spaces and intimate cityscapes can represent the home-making experience of migrants and diaspora members in London and the contemporary urban environments in general. When looking at existing representations of migration and diaspora, it is noticeable that many link these topics with homelessness and rootlessness, while also presenting migrants and diaspora members as aliens and intruders of the receiving society, what sociologist Liisa Malkki (1995) terms as the sedentarist bias. Through the analyses of selected artworks by two visual artists based in London and of migratory and diasporic backgrounds based in London, installation artist DoHo Suh by artist filmmaker Alia Syed, I investigate how they challenge the sedentarist models and materialising migratory and diasporic home-making practices and, in doing so, provide more nuanced readings about migration and diaspora which reflect the current conditions of heightened globalisation and mass human flow.