Finding Home
An installation by Thayù
Finding Home is an exploration of histories, existence and the traces of lives in Kenya, looking at cultural objects, photographs and archival materials held in museum collections far from home. It asks us to question what we have been told about ourselves and to consider the histories that may have existed all along, even when nobody was looking for them.
For the installation, I created a hut inspired by Kamba culture as the front-facing structure, drawing from familiar forms of home, belonging and cultural memory. Inside, blue lighting and sand transformed the space into an environment that invited visitors to pause and look differently. The sand represented nature as a constant, a part of our world that has remained even as generations have passed, objects have traveled, and histories have been collected, interpreted and preserved elsewhere.
The archival images within the installation have been blurred due to image rights restrictions. Rather than allowing the images to be the sole focus, the installation creates space to reflect on what remains, what has been carried across time, and what we might still discover about ourselves through the things our ancestors made, used and left behind.
