Finding/Making Home: A Practice-Based Study in the Use of Everyday Ritual and the Making of Home

Using an auto-ethnographical approach with an arts practice-based methodology I examine in what ways the overlap of home and personal faith impact identity with the purpose of coming to a new understanding of home. The intent is to examine notions of home and how it can be understood by using my personal history to examine what presuppositions I hold about home. I examine the extent to which home is fixed in a specific location. I question the ways in which artistic engagement with specific materials can inform understandings of home. I additionally question the extent to which ritual plays a role in a sense of home. This inquiry has primarily taken place in the studio where I used a combination of printmaking, drawing, and photography in order to generate a series of practice-based art works. My methodology includes use of specific materials to convey meaning, site-specific works, reflective journaling on intellectual, emotional and artistic discoveries, and an on-going dialogue and wrestle with my personal faith. Living in a time where people are more mobile than ever, with an unparalleled access to information and connection due to the internet has led to the loss of an understanding of home. There is an ongoing discussion of home occurring within the contemporary art world. There is simultaneously an increased engagement with religion and a redefining of the relationship between art and religion. I situate my inquiry at the intersection of these two discussions, by looking at my relationship with faith and the home. I discovered connections between my understandings of home and my relationship to religion, in that in both I engage in ritualistic behaviour that provides a sense of meaning. In addressing my own idealised notions of home, I was able to reconcile it with a more accurate portrayal, in which home, like artistic practice, requires time, labour, and intentionality. In this research, I explore ways in which home can be viewed as place, as fold (after Deleuze) and as ritual. I conclude that home is not tied to the specificity of a place but is a multifaceted combination of many places