Here, there & nowhere
This work explores the themes of war, poverty, and globalization through the creation of fictitious cityscapes that highlight the interconnections between North and South contexts. By creating representations that highlight hybridity and translocality, these images subvert the neocolonial gaze that imposes and demands cultural authenticity. Cities are presented as alive and inhabited without being reproduced in images as exotic “others†and bucolic landscapes “untouched†by civilization—some of the familiar visual tropes of colonial and neocolonial photography. The creation of fictitious cityscapes also reflects my experience of the contexts that I inhabit in Canada and Lebanon as being materially but not sensually distinct. For many immigrants and others displaced by war, poverty, or other reasons, memories of place not only exist at an intellectual level, but also as an embodied sensation of being transposed to another place. The creation of fictitious cityscapes that bring together the here and there resonates on a level of understanding that goes beyond descriptions of place and time to a level of feeling, thinking, and experiencing, that encapsulates what it feels like to exist in more than one place at once.
