An Impossible Home

This mixed media piece's underlying concept of joining together all the discrete cultures that came to define my identity has been with me ever since my first migration. This work defies geographic space by uniting the subway systems of Ukraine, Israel, and New York in a single map. While the Big Apple metaphor for New York may be intuitive, I use the pomegranate and the strawberry to signify important childhood memories associated with each location. The pomegranate symbolizes the Jewish high holiday of Rosh HaShanah observed in Israel and strawberries, to me, remind of my father’s berry business. The subway cart is made up of found objects, which represent my process of finding pieces of myself in each new home. The design is complete with metrocards, which, through multiple languages, have multicultural applications.