Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between forced dislocation and home beautification practices. It is the result of an interdisciplinary approach and an arts-based methodology. At the heart of this work lies a double-interrogation: how is the daily appreciation and manipulation of one’s belongings crucial to the experience of creating home anew following forced dislocation and in what ways do these home beautification practices and the repetition of stylized narratives—and other personal and cultural stories of home and its loss—contribute to the perpetuation of violence in places where home is contested?

Home’s properties, associations, and manifestations (or lack-there-of) in the political, cultural, emotional, and embodied realms are investigated using a wide array of materials, including the presentation and analysis of a series of live art events that I convened within the tenure of this cycle of research-creation, historical community pageants, personal stories of home and its loss, as well as salient aspects of housing theory and trauma studies.

This research-creation process leads towards the realisation that deliberate attention paid to the material and immaterial cultures of home may either help transform the traumas of displacement or create new ones. And that furthermore, the beautification of one’s home interior and surroundings is heavily involved in the sense-making process of the (un)making of home.