skib søger havn

I see the sail as a symbol of a journey; regardless of nationality, fluid and in constant motion, influenced and shaped by the meetings and the places where you dock. They symbolise the passage from home to a new home and create a union between the two. And with that they also symbolise ‘hope’. At the same time, the stalling of the sails refer to the despair and the violent act of restricting something or someone that is made to move, to live and deserves to thrive.

As a daughter of immigrants, you’d think i was prepared when i moved from Holland to Denmark, but i wasn’t. Moving to another country and another language presented me with a whole lot of challenges i had not expected. But more important, it confronted me with my own history, our family’s history that they ignore. I recognise the similar but also the different challenges my mother had to face. Her moving from a poorer country to a western country with her brown skin compared to me moving from Holland to Denmark with my white skin. It matters and it opened up my world further to the social and cultural phenomenon of migration on a personal level, following my own experiences and the experiences of the many migrants i met here in Denmark.

Skib Søger Havn, therefor is a personal work; a sweet and bitter patchwork of my experiences and moods when moving to DK, in color, form and material.