Birds from Another Continent
Works commissioned by Auckland Council for World of Cultures Festival 2022 & 2021
Māngere Art Centre, 11.03.22-22.04.22
Onehunga Community Centre, 22.03.21-31.03.21
Papakura Art Gallery, 13.02.21–20.03.21
https://aklcouncil/videos/world-of-cultures/
Exhibition text:
Birds from Another Continent is part of Rozana Lee’s ongoing project that draws on ideas around migration, identity, and the role of material culture in fostering a sense of belonging that is grounded in diversity. Painting, moving images, and hand-drawn batik fabrics bear diverse cultural motifs such as oriental floral scrolls, fern, Pohutukawa and banana trees. Mythical birds, the Phoenix and eagle-like Garuda, signify cross-cultural mobility, transformation, birth and renewal, and unity in diversity. For Lee, these motifs elicit memories of her birth country Indonesia: its cultural, social and political history as well as linking her to her ancestral homeland in China, tracing her multi-generational immigrant past to her adopted home country Aotearoa New Zealand.
"Imagine birds uncaged, flying from place to place and in sync with the sun, stars and seasons, migrating to return home. We too migrate — sometimes alone, leaving home without knowing if we will return one day. The idea of home and belonging becomes transient, remains in flux, then turns to feelings of nostalgia. No longer a specific or fixed place, home is a feeling that comes along with us, to anywhere and everywhere we belong. Life moves and becomes an assemblage of fragments, of places, objects, relationships and memories received, and then embraced, marking a pattern of home. We are a migrant humanity, energised by movement and the state of in-betweenness that adorns us whenever and wherever we are with familiar patterns, sound, smells and tastes."
Photos by Sam Hartnett, courtesy of Auckland Council and Papakura Art Gallery
Works commissioned by Auckland Council for World of Cultures Festival 2022 & 2021
Māngere Art Centre, 11.03.22-22.04.22
Onehunga Community Centre, 22.03.21-31.03.21
Papakura Art Gallery, 13.02.21–20.03.21
https://aklcouncil/videos/world-of-cultures/
Exhibition text:
Birds from Another Continent is part of Rozana Lee’s ongoing project that draws on ideas around migration, identity, and the role of material culture in fostering a sense of belonging that is grounded in diversity. Painting, moving images, and hand-drawn batik fabrics bear diverse cultural motifs such as oriental floral scrolls, fern, Pohutukawa and banana trees. Mythical birds, the Phoenix and eagle-like Garuda, signify cross-cultural mobility, transformation, birth and renewal, and unity in diversity. For Lee, these motifs elicit memories of her birth country Indonesia: its cultural, social and political history as well as linking her to her ancestral homeland in China, tracing her multi-generational immigrant past to her adopted home country Aotearoa New Zealand.
"Imagine birds uncaged, flying from place to place and in sync with the sun, stars and seasons, migrating to return home. We too migrate — sometimes alone, leaving home without knowing if we will return one day. The idea of home and belonging becomes transient, remains in flux, then turns to feelings of nostalgia. No longer a specific or fixed place, home is a feeling that comes along with us, to anywhere and everywhere we belong. Life moves and becomes an assemblage of fragments, of places, objects, relationships and memories received, and then embraced, marking a pattern of home. We are a migrant humanity, energised by movement and the state of in-betweenness that adorns us whenever and wherever we are with familiar patterns, sound, smells and tastes."
Photos by Sam Hartnett, courtesy of Auckland Council and Papakura Art Gallery
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