Müüt maa, Muutmälu
(Mythical Land, Random Memory) [2017-18]
100x A4 hand-drawn sketches of Estonia from memory
‘Müüt maa, Muutmälu’ was part of an ongoing investigation of mine into the impact of displacement and dislocation on diasporic communities. Through the lens of memory and map-making, I approached 100 Australian-Estonians from around the country (i.e. born in Australia or moved when young) to produce and send a map to me drawn from memory of what their ‘Eesti’ looked like. By quantifuing qualitative data and transposing and mapping out subjective lived expeirneces into a digital sphere, the work produced new blurred, evolving, organic and grotesque border lines highly subjective yet informed by everyday life.
Slowly and incrementally, the work re-contextualises individual and collective notions of identity, place and belonging and contemplates the relationship we have with our surroundings and how we can rekindle our connection to the land through new ways of seeing (through psychogeographic practices such as dérive).
As part of this map, I produced three layers. Lakes, Cities & Borders. Each map was then screened on a small display and over time during it’s exhibition, the image would build up slowly to produce an averaged-out image (as seen below).
