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Mapping Home

Shara Art Fair – Jeddah , Saudi Arabia
18 November – 22 November 2020

Mapping Home is inspired by the fragile layers of our relationship with space in a visually geographic form. The work does not have nationalistic agendas and represents a metaphorical meeting point that locals and settlers can call home. Given the circumstances of the past year, the longing to be home grows more profound, and the feeling of displacement has become more familiar. This is how Mapping Home was born.

Featured Artists: Alaa Balky • Shaima Shamsi • Mashal Alsaei

This concept is represented in textile art and depicts the authentic charm and organic connectivity between the districts of a city.

It explores the idea of a home being both a physical and metaphorical place and the relationship between our birthplace and the place we call home. This evokes complex emotions such as displacement, migration, home, identity, birth, and longing and questions the transparent contradiction between longing for permanence whilst actively seeking freedom.

The map is marked with the locations of artists Shaima Shamsi and Alaa Balky’s homes to represent the human connection to home. An excerpt of the poem Bury, written by Shaima, is incorporated into the design. ‘I was born inside you; the atoms that belong to you belong to me too. This integration of language represents the importance of the home concept, no matter what or how the home may look.

BURY

I was born inside you; the atoms that belong to you belong to me too.
I was born inside you; the atoms that belong to you no longer belong to me too.
I was born inside you, but now I long for you.
-Shaima Shamsi