Could you tell us why you chose to respond to the archive as a whole rather than choose a particular collection? How did you start to navigate the early stages of your research?
My work always originates in a personal feeling that I translate to a larger story, such as adoption or the search for ‘home’. So, in the archive’s collection, I tried to find something connecting all those stories but also fitting my own feeling. A sense of missing and thinking of home shines through in a lot of the archive’s material: missing one’s children and grandchildren, the weather, but also the typically Dutch stamppot (mashed potatoes with vegetables). To me, that sense of longing or missing is a very poetical notion, but also strange and hard to describe. It is intangible and invisible yet very pervasive.
I was born in Thailand but adopted at a young age and raised in the Netherlands. I didn’t return to Thailand until I was older but I still feel strongly connected to my Thai heritage. Sometimes I subconsciously miss Thailand. I don’t always know exactly what it is that I miss, but I feel a missing when thinking about Thailand. When the sun shines brightly, for example, or when I see some strangely shaped vegetable in the Asian supermarket. In ‘Notions of Home’, I wanted to find out whether expats recognise these feelings and miss their native country. For this series, I interviewed six expats and three adopted people and asked them what reminds them of home.
Have you worked with archival material before and, if so, could you comment on the importance of responding to historical records within your practice?
Because I start with a feeling and a personal story and work from there, I don’t really use archives. However, I always research my topic to learn more. That research often leads to new ideas for the photographs I take.
The images that you created bring the ‘everyday’ into the iconic. Could you explain your approach to these images? (lighting, colour, etc.)
I like working with everyday items; they often have a funny shape and are colourful and – very important – recognisable. These items help me to translate a large subject such as adoption, home or, in this project, the sense of missing into subtle and tangible images.
The expats’ answers were the starting point for my pictures; I converted them into colourful and humorous still lives. On purpose, I take the photographs in a studio and not on location. This leaves a lot of space for the viewer to fill in their connotations about the country in question. Additionally, the colourful backgrounds tell something about the country of origin. The terraced houses, for example, are situated in surroundings as grey as the Dutch skies and I added a dark red background to the coffee pad picture, because I associate that colour with Latin America, where the adopted children are from.
You often explore the concept of ‘home’ in your practice. Has the process of interviewing expatriates from all over the world brought you closer to an understanding of the word?
Interviewing the expats showed that ‘missing’ is a universal concept. And, though everyone has their own description of home, many elements are similar. Home is the place you are from, the place of your parents’ and grandparents’ stories that you grew up with. Often the interviewees longed for the nature at their specific location, such as the forests, the mountains, the sea, and for one person the avocado plantations that region is known for. For some people it was hard to put that sense of home into specific words, even though those concrete and specific images are exactly what I am seeking for my photographs. Sometimes the expats I interviewed kept thinking in general terms, such as the weather, the many hours of sunshine or the colour of the national flag, and it wasn’t until the end of the interview that they came up with a very specific description I could work with.
For the future exhibition of the works, you imagine them as part of a larger installation. Could you describe how you see this coming together?
For the travelling exhibition, I chose eight images that I printed on an A4-size surface. In addition, at the opening, I will show several large-size images. I will invite the audience to send postcards with my images to the place they consider home. In this way, my images will travel and the story will continue.
Are there any strategies or themes developed during the Saudade project that you are keen to take forward into future works?
The project stayed close to me because I searched for a specific feeling in the many expat stories and fragments. It was beautiful to connect this feeling to the archive and identify with the stories in the collections.