Saturday, April 5, 2008

"Far From Home": An Exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art



This past week I made time to go see the latest exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, NC, which had a special exhibit titled, "Far From Home." All the visual art (paintings and sculpture and installation alike) revolved around the theme of people displaced from what they construed or knew as "home." For example, there was a young man in a Mao jacket from China standing in front of the Parthenon in Nashville, TN, by artist Tseng Kwong Chi (who also photographed this image from his Ambiguous Ambassador series), and another of a young African-born child in front of strange plants not of his native home.

On pilgrimage, the question is always this: are we going home? Or did we leave home in order to go to a new home? Do we make "home" wherever we live? Is home a place? A people? Is there a certain time that we "will be home," and time in which being home is not wise nor a smart place for us to be? And do we have to be far away from home in order to appreciate what is home and know what and where it is by knowing it retrospectively?

On pilgrimage, are we far away from home?

Bien camino!

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