Finding Home: Global Realities
As part of the Scripps College Humanities Institute’s spring 2018 “Exclusive Nationalisms: Global Migration and Immigration” series, Finding Home features the work of artists whose work grapple with the intersections of migration. In this exhibit, the work of Brenda Gomez (youth photographer & artivista), Saba Hakimi (ceramicist, sculptor & installation artist) and others traverse the boundaries and definitions of home, belonging and borders. Their work intricately considers the role of gender identity in relation to the movement of people and exclusivity of certain national narratives through the use of various media.
For more about the opening reception visit here.
Brenda Karina Gomez (Pomona High School ’18)currently lives in Pomona, California and has been capturing moments with her camera on and off since 5th grade due to lack of resources. She is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and has two younger sisters. She is a sculptor, painter, writer, photographer, and filmmaker. She is an artivista who created a film centered on immigration with a group called Pomona Students Union. Brenda at her very young age co-founded Pomona Students Union, a student-led organization that promotes the creation of better learning environments and empowers youth to speak about current issues in their community. Most of her recent photography centers on the people of Pomona, where there is a large Chicana/o and Latinx immigrant community. Through her lens, Brenda has brought to life the artistry of community members that undergo the daily struggle to survive so that they can provide for themselves and their families. She is looking forward to graduation and starting college in the fall in a local liberal arts college in order to continue organizing in her home city of Pomona. Brenda has displayed her art at local art galleries such as The dA Center for the Arts and the Latino Art Museum.
Saba Hakimi is an Iranian-American Artist who was born and raised in Tehran. She immigrated to the United States in 2011. She primarily worked as a sculptor and her paintings emerged in recent years. Familiar objects and imagery are highly influential to her. She is very interested in her own background, culture, and experiences. Another essential element, especially in her painting, is the concept of home and familiar space. She has an obsessive attraction towards objects that remind her of her past experiences and memories, mostly from her life in Iran, which now present themselves in her work. The struggle of finding a second home is presenting itself in her Home series where she simultaneously reveals only a very small window into her nostalgic memories and her present life as if the rest of her reality is yet to be discovered. On the other hand, the Superstition series is a mirror into her struggle between her interest in the motifs and the icons of her subculture and the rational mind of herself. She chooses to paint this series in a monochromic manner to show her objection to the subject matter yet her attention to details and the highlights reveal her strong interest in them. Hakimi graduated from UCLA in 2017 with a BA in Arts. She lives and works in Los Angeles.