Abstract

Nêrens Nie - Abstract

Kaylin de Bruyn - Student ID: 8038839

‘Nêrens Nie’ is an Afrikaans phrase that roughly translates to ‘nowhereness’ or ‘not anywhere’, a way for me to express my displacement in Aotearoa New Zealand as an immigrant from South Africa and a descendant of a colonising culture. My art practice this year has been focused on trying to find a culture I belong to by establishing an identity that is tied to the places I have been and am currently in.

My research began in colonisation then extended into the field of identity; I explored cultural and national identities, hybridity, languages, imagined communities, ‘Pakeha’, any discourse that involved identity in even the slightest way. The biggest issue I faced was that I was not finding the answers to identify and place myself even though there is a vast amount of research available on the subject. I discovered that I could not just claim a culture or identity based on where I lived, identities can be influenced by the aforementioned concepts but are mainly built on personal histories and experiences.

I aim for my bead curtains to inform the viewers of the importance of experiences, each strand is a year, each bead a day. The colour and organisation of the beads exemplify where each person lived/lives, to acknowledge my family’s immigration over the world: Holland – blue beads, South Africa – transparent beads, Aotearoa New Zealand – grey beads and gold beads to represent birthdays. There are 60,403 beads on 168 strands in total for the project as it is currently presented. The curtains are memorial pieces for my grandmother (longest one) and uncle (middle one) who’s passing this year was the experiences that impacted my identity and as a result, my art practice. The bead curtain that represents me is unfinished with the correct amount of beads on the floor for the days left in the year because I still live, my identity is still forming. When hung up the bead strands aren't all 100% the same length because, even though I ordered all the same size (6mm x 6mm), some of them are a slightly different size which makes a big difference over all to the strand, however, they all have the correct amount of beads. The curtains are hung so that the years line up to represent how these lives overlapped each other.

The bead curtains were blessed with ‘E to matou Matua i te rangi’ by Aroha Hauraki-Ahdar of Ngapuhi and Tainui descent, who chose to do it because she considers me family, a welcoming into this country.

The methodology of my art practice has changed over the duration of this project; at the beginning I was creating artworks that too obviously represented my theoretical research. I moved onto responding to my experiences, something that I feel is a much stronger and effective way of creating art that not only talks about the theoretical research I do, it puts it into action.