Migrant Landscape
Seher Anand
What does migrant mean to you? Today’s media coverage of migration is flooded with stories of refugee “crisis,” often presented as temporary, or worse, inconvenient. What else could migration mean to us? How can we shift familiar perspectives regarding the regulation of human mobility to rethink our approach to migration, break notions of fixing people in place, and explore the new spaces it creates?
We don’t live in a space of absolute “nationhood,” instead our environment is a product of the constant movements of goods, practices and people in space. In a world where one cannot exist without migration, those in movement motivated by human rights, safety and security face prejudice, cliché, and politically charged rhetoric that harms them. A more holistic understanding and open mind about the ubiquity of migration, and its inevitability, could promote its redefinition and increase awareness of the ground truths of migration.
While the sea and sky appear boundless, the borders between nations are abstractions, drawn by politics, conflicts or agreements. I want my thesis to visually and informatively approach the migrant and migration through different themes, questions, and narratives from people from around the world. Exploring the migrant framework through the construction of borders, the design of landscapes and other objects that assist and encompass migration, as well as the understanding of home, identity, and permanence—as one moves through sections of the book: “A Fabricated Realm,” “Across Odysseys,” and “Limbo and Permanence.” Our entire environment is migratory—its essence is both integrated and collective.