The quest for home and identity is a universal theme that has shaped human experiences for millennia. Whether it is the yearning for belonging or the search for self, these themes resonate deeply across cultures, time periods, and personal journeys. Artists across mediums: painting, sculpture, literature, or digital arts, have long explored these complexities, offering us windows into personal and collective understandings of what it means to belong and who we are.
Having recently read Aatish Taseer’s ‘A Return to Self: Excursions in Exile’, I once again found myself reflecting on the meaning of home, what it symbolises and how its definition shifts based on experience, travel, and memory.
More than a physical structure, home is one of the most deeply emotional and psychological concepts. It can represent comfort, safety, and familiarity, but also loss, constraint, or dislocation. For some, it is the root of identity; for others, it’s something to escape in order to find oneself.
Artists often explore home through personal history, cultural roots, and time. Frida Kahlo, for example, used her home and domestic spaces as tools for self-expression. Her painting ‘The Two Fridas’ (1939) explores dual identity and emotional ties to her homeland, while her ‘Casa Azul’ (Blue House) served as both sanctuary and political space.
In the context of migration and displacement, home becomes both a geographic and emotional landscape, an evolving metaphor for belonging, often marked by pain and resilience.
For artists like Ai Weiwei, who has experienced exile from China, home and belonging are intertwined with political freedom and forced migration. His 2017 installation, ‘Law of the Journey’, a boat filled with inflatable figures, symbolises the global refugee crisis and the search for a safe haven.
Like home, identity is fluid, shaped by cultural, social, and personal forces. In art, it often involves a negotiation between individual experience and collective narratives. Indian artists like Zarina Hashmi have powerfully explored cultural identity. As a Muslim-born Indian woman living abroad, Hashmi saw home as impermanent. Her cast paper work ‘Ghar’, dusted with shimmering mica, evokes both beauty and fragility, suggesting that home, no matter how carefully built, can turn to smithereens. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
One of the most prominent ways artists explore identity is through self-portraiture. The artistic mirror reveals not only the external self but also the internal struggles and transformations that shape identity.
Cindy Sherman challenges identity by assuming various personas in her photographic series, ‘Untitled Film Stills’ (1977–1980), exploring how media and culture shape our self-image. Similarly, South African photographer Zanele Muholi uses portraiture to spotlight Black LGBTQ+ individuals, challenging dominant narratives and honoring marginalized identities.
In literature and film, the quest for identity remains central. James Baldwin’s, ‘Giovanni’s Room’ explores sexuality and societal expectation, while Ava DuVernay’s, ‘13th’ examines systemic racism and its impact on African American identity.
Home and identity are deeply interconnected. The search for one often involves the discovery of the other. Yayoi Kusama’s immersive ‘Infinity Rooms’, which even made their way to India, reflect her personal battles and search for self-acceptance. Her work blurs the lines between space and self, inviting introspection into our place in the world.
Through these artistic explorations, we see how home and identity are rarely fixed. They are fluid, complex, and deeply personal yet universally resonant. Art allows us to reflect on our own assumptions and recognize shared human experiences.
Ultimately, the search for home and identity is an ongoing journey. Art becomes a kind of home itself, a space of refuge, reflection, and discovery. It allows us to piece together the fragments of our stories and see ourselves in the experiences of others.
The recent devastating floods in North India are a stark reminder of the impermanence of materiality. Perhaps home, in its truest form, is always transcendental.