Hola Susanne!
I have read your message and I must say that ever since this project started, not only I have not stopped thinking about immigration but I also find immigration everywhere in my life. At the end of the day it all starts with the fact that I live in a foreign city.
Undoubtedly it is an experience that enriches the one that lives through it leads you to value things that were meaningless before and vice versa. It is one of the greatest life experiences.
I have always believed that at least half of our social conflicts and wars will not exists if everyone were given the opportunity to experience living elsewhere. Being a foreigner has changed my life.
This is an extensive subject, one way to address it is to separate it by chapters or by creating a journal with our daily impressions, memories, thoughts, visions, etc. This way, we can have a starting point and continue the journey of working together. I have been thinking that we could generate a list of places we both know and have visited and continue on that line of thought.
I have so much to say and share that makes it hard to find a beginning so I will be sending photographs, and various articles which will allow us to start forming our mosaic.
To start this mosaic, I will begin to share the story of a necklace I was asked to create as an exercise during my first jewelry course in Barcelona. The task was to create three necklace, they should represent my past, my present and my future. For the FUTURE (please find the attached image) necklace I understood that life can take many different directions so I used the analogy of a round about highway.
The PRESENT necklace is in constant development so the task was incomplete.
Then showing he PAST necklace was to answer questions about who I really was, what I have done with my life, where I was from, what I have studied, etc. And then, the paths starting showing up, similar to the concept of the future (different roads to take): and I thought the past was different points in my life. Thus, I made a diagram to represent my paths during specific stages in my life. One of the stages I represented was my childhood, when I was a girl. The path was the commute paths between home and my school, or to swimming lessons, or to grandma’s, etc. There were also other paths such as when I went to college or my vacations. That is how I arrived to the necklace I show you next. My past is the collection of paths through different places. Places that provided me with life experiences and with the understanding that the journey from place to place has made an immigrant of me.
