For a long time I wasn’t sure who I was or where I belonged, one of the effects of having a parent born in a completely different culture then yourself. A parent who has been through so much but doesn’t speak about that, because they don’t want to burden you with that knowledge or themselves with the memory of it. But what happens when you do talk about it with your children? Will they understand you better, will they understand themselves better? Will they tell you their stories in return? In my this study I believe it does, I believe it heals. 

 

The shape of the installation references the tramtracks in Amsterdam, an essential part to my fathers story in the Netherlands.

 

The aim of my work is to inspire diaspora children and their parents to share their stories with each other, in order to heal their bond and passed trauma’s. 

With an anekdote shared by my father in one of his stories in mind, I’ve analyzed our conversations, visuals from old family pictures in Egypt, me together with my father, walking my his old route again. It’s a visual study about and for the diaspora children, investigating what happens when you decide to do share stories and aims to make you feel at home. To make you feel like you belong, and your story is important.

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