Latrelle Maria Rostant (MFA 2019)
Diaspora Blues
“So, here you are.
Too foreign for home.
Too foreign for here,
Never enough for both.”
Ijeoma Umebinyuo
Through woven textiles, I explore what it means to be too foreign for the place I come from, and the spaces I now occupy. The carnival culture of Trinidad and Tobago, where I was born, has become a space where the culture of those who were bought or came to the island are able make something that reflected, this third place for the new culture they became a part of. Each culture taking their own culture and adapting it to what they encountered when they arrived to the islands. Taking the prompt of adaptation I have adapted the loom to make objects, that like me, do not inherently reflect how they were made. The modular loom I created, allows me to make woven objects that not only respond to how they are warped on it. But they also respond to what I see as I am weaving on the modular loom. Looking at and understanding how tools, technique, space, and material can be used to make objects that cause me to reflect my own understanding of self. A third place that is the intersection of the place that I came form and the places that I now occupy.