Migration#2

2006

My work explores how culture and language shape and define our identity and how immigration/emigration and travel alters or illuminates that identity. I investigate otherness and self from the standpoint of a foreigner and of a traveler. The traveler is comfortable with her transience because traveling implies choice, while being a foreigner often suggests having to reconcile one’s native culture with an adopted one.

In Migration #2, a bird tears itself out of a Russian world map from where my family fled. This little bird, marked with the place and language of its origins, flies across the world and finally lands on the area of America where my family settled as political refugees. The bird merges into the surrounding map but its markings remain unchanged. In this biographical video, tracing my family’s journey, I question the meaning of being a foreigner and to what degree one is capable of assimilating into a new culture.

Asya Reznikov

American

34 Jahre