I draw upon the stories of people who have experienced nostalgia to identify a sense of belonging to home. I create familiar objects specific to the stories of diasporic peoples to establish a connection between myself and the viewer or wearer, even when I am not present. As a former hotelier adept at initiating conversation, the goal of this work is to serve as a communication mediator, a way to find mutual interests among people in a proactive way.
Can jewelry build networks of connection across time and space? How does the format of jewelry impact the relationship between the wearer and the object? Can I project a feeling of nostalgia to help people process disconnection from home? I anticipate changes in behavior and attitude from the wearers as they reestablish a connection to home through jewelry.
With these thoughts in mind, I set out to create jewelry able to communicate and uplift one’s mood through nonverbal means. I began a series of works entitled “ Security Blanket”. I use the term to describe the transitional time where we try to find our footing in a new context by analyzing our sense of belonging, while being physically disconnected from home. I draw upon the stories of people, and through jewelry, manifest their sense of belonging in these times. The resulting objects further establish a connection between myself and the community that I am engaged with and enable this group to construct a dialog with themselves, their own memories, nostalgia, and histories. I translate each story into the format of jewelry to foster intimacy between the story’s owner and the work itself. Each piece of jewelry is created in response to dislocation and the necessary search for new footing in their current location.
I conducted a series of interviews with people who are studying abroad and dislocated from their homes, with the goal of creating jewelry from the individual stories that I heard. The questions I asked aimed to understand how they define belonging. I asked them to describe significant objects they brought with them, objects that carried sentimental value and little practical use, ones that captured significant, intangible moments, and as such helped their owner cope with homesickness. The interviewees are all from Asia with similar backgrounds of studying abroad in foreign countries for more than three years.
The objects that the interviewees brought with them from home mostly have some level of practical usage but extended emotional weight because they have also become a souvenir from home. The majority of these “souvenirs” from home are ephemeral, with expiration dates or short shelf lives. In the interests of creating permanent objects for the story owner, I translate and recreate these objects on a wearable scale.
I consider myself not just a translator of these stories, but also a facilitator in helping people process the emotional challenges arising from current circumstances affecting them. This body of work manifests the security blankets of my interview subjects, representing, for them, an attachment to home.
