Immigrant

2009 | Perspex, ink and resin | 17 x 25 x 5 cm

For all of my life I have felt partly like a foreigner in a foreign land.  Coming from a family of Jewish immigrants to South Africa from Lithuania, I spent most of my childhood trying to reconcile being a white South African living under the Apartheid regime.  On the one hand I was raised wrapped in a blanket on the back of a black mama.  On the other hand we weren't officially allowed to sit on the same bench together being of different races. 

As an adult I find myself living in the UK and still a foreigner despite being welcomed as an economic migrant.  I now spend my life wearing my accent and my jewish name on my sleeve.  My "immigrantness" is plain for all to see and hear.

This sculpture tries to capture this reality.  The sense of being 'almost' part of a society but having some aspect of yourself deeply rooted in a place far away that feels ephemeral and other.