Nouanmary Somsai

I work predominantly with multi media and I am concerned with autobiography and its relationship with the construction of identity. In my latest installation I use photography, pen on paper, sculpture and audio to explore my polyglot and poly-cultural identity as a means to create and to communicate. The work is called, “You and Me”.

“You and Me” provides a journey through languages, signs and media that represent my negotiation of my poly-cultural inheritance1. The journey can be considered similar to looking into a mirror. I look at myself, reformulate what I see into an image, a metaphor, and then present this to the viewers. In this way I gently ask the viewer to participate and build their own interpretation that in turn, influences how they see themselves. Continuity is thusly created, between the originator, their work, and the viewer. “You and Me” is evocative of Bakhtin’s views as described by his concept of the ‘Architectonic’, where identity does not belong merely to the individual, rather it is shaped by all, forming a complex web of discourse between its elements.

“You and Me” can be seen as an attempt to create another means of expression; a language that transcends the cultural boundaries. A poly-cultural world inflicts, upon the participants, a sensation of displacement that promotes an internal confusion. From the instability that is engendered is formed the impulse to create new languages that overcome boundaries in an effort to find new alternative methods of communication.

1.The word poly-cultural identifies a world defined by many poles. In my sense a ‘pole’ describes both a physical location and its attendant experiences, including of culture and of local conditions. In this way it is different from “multi-cultural” which is defined solely in terms of culture and not of place.