Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From

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"Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From," 2020

installation view at the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (photo by Toni Hafkenscheid)

Most travellers know the unnerving feeling of being strangers in a foreign land. There’s no one to call in an emergency and nobody approaches you, or, if they do, there are impenetrable language barriers. This level of solitude is often what it’s like to move to a new country. It’s not something even child immigrants, like myself, ever forget. A subtle fear of isolation can follow you like a shadow.

Such personal experiences aren’t shared widely. News reports tend to focus on larger trends, not the inner lives of individuals. So, I was filled with curiosity to see an Edmonton show, Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From, by artists who grew up in different cultures than their parents. Organized by the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto and the Italian-based Fondazione Imago Mundi, and on view at the Art Gallery of Alberta until June 19, it sheds an intimate light on a global issue.

On first impression, this touring exhibition suffers from its grid-like and formulaic presentation, designed to ease shipping. With works displayed in cabinets set against walls or scattered in hallways, it feels a bit like a student show. Yet, the 15 international artists have impressive exhibition records and their sincerity and insights shine.

For instance, Houda Terjuman’s mixed-media sculpture, The Road Less Taken, offers a visceral metaphor for the immigrant experience: a tiny boat clings to a fragment of solid land suspended in mid-air. The only passenger is a palm tree that struggles to set root in this inhospitable spot. Terjuman – her mother is Swiss and her father Syrian, but she was born in Morocco, where she now lives – captures the sense of dislocation that even some second-generation immigrants experience.

The dramatic moment of leaving one’s country is vividly expressed in Jeanno Gaussi’s installation, For Sitara Hamza. Long black macramé braids suspended on a white wall recall a scene she says she will never forget. To save her from the war in their homeland of Afghanistan, her mother cut off her beautiful hair without explanation. It made the five-year-old Gaussi look older and facilitated her migration to Berlin with an aunt. But the pain the work evokes is deeper than the sudden haircut. That day, Gaussi left behind all that was familiar and comforting.

Texas-born Mexican artist Daniela Edburg’s dreamlike relief, Uprooted, conjures timeless cycles of migration. She staged photos of American children with Mexican roots that are reminiscent of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. The youngsters gaze at the viewer from dark interiors, their unsmiling faces entwined by hand-crocheted tentacles that represent cheatgrass – an invasive European weed that out-competes native species for water. This chilling work suggests that migrations, human and plant alike, are both inevitable and perilous.

The shock of migration crosses generations. While the artists in this show tackle different aspects of the experience, their works are permeated with a lingering sense of loss and ongoing passage. For some, being in transition has become so natural that life on a floating rock, as in Terjuman’s sculpture, defines identity. But that’s not always a sad and lonely place. Immigrants are less rootless than willing to set root wherever we land. The ability to adapt can make us feel like citizens of the globe. ■

Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From at the Art Gallery of Alberta from April 15 to June 19, 2022.

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