On being vulnerable
My DNA origins map
I’ve been making some independent work recently – trying to use a range of creative methods to think through aspects of my own family history, through the use of archives (family photos plus online archives). This is out of my comfort zone for a number of reasons and I’m having to give a lot of thought to why.
The work is about my late father’s side of the family, which was Anglo Indian (a community of mixed heritage linked to European colonisation of India). Specifically, about what I see as silences around aspects of this history, or at least gaps in my own knowledge.
This work has not been easy to make, but when I wrote a text to sit with it, the process became easier. The work is for myself more than anything else – it was a way to work through some ideas and turned into a kind of ‘self facilitation’ exercise, where I tried to do the kind of things I might ask participants to do during socially engaged projects.
I have made a little zine of the work really just as a way of drawing a line under it (for now) so I can move on to other things. I printed a few copies to potentially give to family members but since they arrived a few days ago, I have realised I feel really strange about the whole thing and I am now trying to interrogate why.
Part of this discomfort is about vulnerability, I think. I am not used to making work of a personal nature. It was drilled into us during journalism training that we should never use the word “I” in our work (and being a very literal person I took this very much to heart), so partly it feels a bit naval gazing and frivolous. Another part is probably about the colonial baggage of this history, which is something I personally find quite difficult.
Another bit could be the fact that this is my subjective take on a shared history. Some relatives may disagree with my perspective and others aren’t really interested at all – to the point I’m slightly embarrassed bringing it up. It’s almost like I need some reassurance from somewhere/someone before I am allowed to feel okay about it. Logically I know this is uneccessary but it’s giving me pause for thought.
Then there’s the issue of my whiteness, which makes talking about this history feel risky – I need to caveat that I’m not trying to exoticise myself/claim an identity or experience which isn’t mine and always feel I have to justify myself and explain. I am sure this paranoia comes as much from my own mind as anything concrete.
It’s interesting to sit with all these complicated feelings because I ask participants in my projects to be vulnerable for me all the time, so it’s a good exercise to put myself there too. I wanted to lean into this discomfort by making this work but now I’m here I am not experiencing the kind of catharsis I hoped I would.
