Fractured portraits: mapping migration faultlines

Through my art practice, this creative project explores gender identity, belonging and place using personal narrative. As an artist and migrant the purpose of this narrative is to explore my history, my community, and my individual story. I investigate being an involuntary British child migrant. My identity formation fractured when immigration disrupted my expectation for continuity and I lived contrapuntally with a foot in both worlds of the pre-emigration and post-immigration worlds. <br><br>British migrants have not been encouraged to tell their stories of migration and resettlement. Historians and government policy did not deem it of value. British emigrants to Australia post-WWII were considered privileged and not ‘real’ migrants, expected to assimilate as if changing countries was like changing rooms.<br><br>I investigate my ideas using a narrative mode of enquiry. A key assumption is that by entering into close association with one’s own or others’ lives, the method is useful to better understand the beliefs and motivations of others or the self. Telling my story is a key navigational strategy to re-chart my life and create artwork. My lived experiences are exemplars of issues regarding identity, patriarchy, history, place, memory, grief and loss, and the findings that I have produced are the focus of the research. I examine family artefacts in relation to these influences. I explore and map gendered identity when immigration fractured my expectations for continuity. The rich data obtained from memory, family artefacts and photographic albums, discussions with relatives and family, form the basis and best provide access to the kind of knowledge being explored. I gain insight and understanding of my own position and acquire at the same time a different perspective. <br><br>This study covers new ground in the way it generates a deeper understanding of migrant identity and raises important issues that have significance for all Australian migrant communities. Australia is comprised of an Indigenous culture, with the overlay of a white settler colony and migrants from many countries. Narrative is used so that this country can maintain its history of the nation, community and individuals of this multicultural society. Telling stories through the creation of artworks generates a deeper understanding of migrant identity. I can make meaning and find a sense of belonging in whatever place within or outside of Australia that I inhabit. I reflect on how I have negotiated or broken the internalised code a culture supplies concerning how life should be experienced. My story becomes a narrative with a wider audience – one relevant to Australian identity. If the culture fails to tell stories, we face becoming a monolithic ‘one size fits all’ nation.<br>