Are you my motherland? Or the myth of nationality from the diary of an antipodean interloper.
2015 Cabinet exhibition Whitecliffe College of Arts & Design.
PART ONE: Foyer cabinet
Justine Giles, 2015. If you lived in this box you’d be home now [cardboard, marker pen, stick]
PART TWO: Library cabinet
Justine Giles, 2015. The things we (never) leave behind [Nana’s embroidered table runner, sprouting potatoes, dimensions variable].
Are you my motherland? Or the myth of nationality from the diary of an antipodean interloper.
Nationality, unlike race or culture, is arbitrary.
Parliamentary debates about changing the New Zealand flag, as well as the issue of extending New Zealand’s quota in response to the refugee crisis, have brought issues around nationality to the foreground in recent months.
What constitutes nationality? Is it a birth certificate? A passport? Citizenship? Having a family history in a particular place? In a country formed through migration, we all have stories from other places that have helped construct our identities.
If nationality is based primarily on happenstance, distilling our diversity into a cohesive symbolic identity is problematic; we don’t all fit into the same box.
And if nationality is so tenuous, how can we make decisions on who does or does not belong?
Rhubarb Pyjamas 